Q. If it is all calories in and calories out at the end of the day, and food timing doesn’t matter (outside of protein), can you just set a weekly calorie target and run with that? Or does it make more sense to have daily goals?
This is actually a really good question, and it is a great example of when theory and real-world application must come together and guide your decision-making. In theory, if you spread out your calories equally day to day, or you had more periodic higher and lower days, as long as calories are matched overall, you would expect the outcome to be the same. Because while people tend to obsess over their daily calories, they ignore the bigger picture and longer time scales. People will freak out if they over-eat or under-eat one day. But over the longer time scale, it isn’t that important. It is the cumulative effect of the caloric intake. One day’s deficit or surplus isn’t going to change much. But do it constantly and you will see a change.
So it is the cumulative effect of the diet/calories that dictate the outcome, so as long as they are matched, we should be all good?
Well, not necessarily.
For some, viewing their caloric intake on a larger scale will allow them to enjoy life a little more day to day. For others, it will ruin their progress. Some will binge one day, then restrict heavily the next. Some will eat randomly day to day and try to make it up on the weekend. So it can be a dangerous thought to entertain. Psychologically, some people can’t deal with the lack of structure and having a weekly calorie goal just makes things more difficult.
Not to mention the effect of having varying caloric intake has on your ability to train hard and also recover. Undereating on your training days, or even the day before or after can leave you to have very lacklustre training sessions (as you aren’t adequately fuelled) and can leave you feeling very beat up from training as you are inadequately fuelling recovery.
Your sleep and general day-to-day mood will also be affected if you don’t have some sort of standardisation to your diet. Some days you will have meals too close/too far from bedtime or too big/too little calorie-wise to enable quality sleep, and while this is potentially an issue whether you view calories daily or weekly, at least having a standardised daily amount ensures some standardisation in how well you sleep. Having random swings in blood sugar is also a recipe for random swings in mood too. With some days having much higher intakes, and some days having much lower intakes, a lot of variability is introduced into the system and as a result, you may feel very different from day to day.
Tracking progress is also very hard to, well, track. If you are all over the place with your diet, and each day is up and down with caloric intake you are going to find it very hard to notice trends. This can be especially harmful if you do find yourself emotionally attached to your scale weight.
Hunger is also something you will be left to deal with if you view things weekly rather than daily. If you overeat the first few days of the week, the last few days of the week will be torture. You will be quite hungry and the likelihood of you actually sticking to your overall caloric goals will be much lower.
So, while theoretically, yes a weekly caloric goal is completely valid, when you put it into practice the vast majority of people will fail. People think it will help them stick to the diet, but if you struggle to dial your diet in with only 1 day to manage, what makes you think 7 days juggled together will be easier? You should have your day-to-day basic dietary habits pretty dialled in before you start trying to manage differing calorie days. And even then, if you do plan on having a more flexible view of your day-to-day calories, you should try to keep the flexibility below 5-10% of total calories. You should also always try to hit your protein target. Ideally, it wouldn’t be more than 2 days before you are back on track fully with your caloric goals (i.e. don’t under-eat 10% every day for 6 days, then try to make it up on the seventh). Ideally, it wouldn’t be an everyday thing either. Perhaps 1-2 days per week.
If you need more specific help with your diet, then you may need professional online coaching to help you dial things in. However, if you wish to become a nutrition coach, then we would recommend getting certified as a Triage Nutrition Coach.
