Weekends and the weekly average: why you should count calories by the week

Monday to Friday everything goes to plan, on Saturday you have guests, on Sunday you “finish the leftovers”. On Monday the scale shows the same as a week ago, and it feels like the diary isn’t working. It is — a week just has seven days, not five.

A little arithmetic

Say your target is 1800 kcal and you stick to it on weekdays. On Saturday and Sunday you eat 2700 each day. Your average for the week is about 2060 kcal a day. If you burn roughly that much, there’s no deficit for the week at all, even though you “were good” on five days out of seven.

Your body doesn’t care which day you ate it. It counts the total.

Look at the average

A single day means almost nothing — good or bad. The useful number is the weekly average: it shows what’s really happening and keeps you from getting cocky after a good Tuesday or giving up after a Saturday.

In Kalorika the weekly average is on the analytics screen, and in the weekly review it sits next to your change in weight — you can see at once whether the two match.

What to do about weekends

Banning weekends is a bad plan: it lasts until the first wedding. Three things do work.

• Log weekends the same way as weekdays. Often that’s enough: when you can see the number, second helpings happen less often.
• Build weekends into the plan. Eat a little less on weekdays, and Saturday fits into the week without the guilt.
• Pick one thing. Dinner at a friend’s or Sunday baking, not everything at once.

One thing doesn’t work: starving on Monday to “make up for” the weekend. It usually ends at the fridge that evening.

What counts as success

A week where Saturday is logged honestly and the average is a little over plan is better than a week with five perfect days and two empty ones. In the first you know what happened and can change something. In the second you can only guess why your weight isn’t moving.

If you regularly come out of a weekend feeling that all is lost, and on weekdays you have to restrict yourself hard, your plan may be too strict. In that case change the plan instead of punishing yourself more.