As a result, both going down and staying there often require consistent discipline, and the whole thing is rather unforgiving in terms of slip-ups, social occasions, and such.
I personally found it very helpful to use a “budget”-style calorie counter—ie. instead of just having a 2100kcal goal every day, you can eat more on some day and then your next day goal will be lower to keep the average at 2100 (and vice versa—if you eat less on a given day, you’ll be able to eat more later). This gave me a lot of freedom to not worry about eating too much at social occasions or just on bad days, while still keeping the weight loss results consistent.
Of course though, as with any weight loss method, this will really vary from person to person. I understand that for some people this might not be helpful or maybe may even be detrimental.
Yes, immediate compensation is useful, even if one has no idea how many calories have been involved (I would not usually know).
Although, in my experience, one needs to be very careful at least for the next two days (if not three) in order to avoid a partial bump.
The most difficult situation is when there are few “wrong days” in a row (e.g. guests are staying, and so on).
But, generally speaking, it seems that there is (often) a very strong asymmetry between the directions of “up” and “down”, the system has a bias to go “up”, that’s what one is fighting against.
Very drastic changes (like serious drugs, or like making one much stronger (and more consistently) committed to some set of goals, not necessarily directly related to one’s body) might sufficiently shift the equilibrium, that’s true...
I personally found it very helpful to use a “budget”-style calorie counter—ie. instead of just having a 2100kcal goal every day, you can eat more on some day and then your next day goal will be lower to keep the average at 2100 (and vice versa—if you eat less on a given day, you’ll be able to eat more later). This gave me a lot of freedom to not worry about eating too much at social occasions or just on bad days, while still keeping the weight loss results consistent.
Of course though, as with any weight loss method, this will really vary from person to person. I understand that for some people this might not be helpful or maybe may even be detrimental.
Yes, immediate compensation is useful, even if one has no idea how many calories have been involved (I would not usually know).
Although, in my experience, one needs to be very careful at least for the next two days (if not three) in order to avoid a partial bump.
The most difficult situation is when there are few “wrong days” in a row (e.g. guests are staying, and so on).
But, generally speaking, it seems that there is (often) a very strong asymmetry between the directions of “up” and “down”, the system has a bias to go “up”, that’s what one is fighting against.
Very drastic changes (like serious drugs, or like making one much stronger (and more consistently) committed to some set of goals, not necessarily directly related to one’s body) might sufficiently shift the equilibrium, that’s true...