Calorie stagger- helpful or harmful?

**tellico** · July 22nd, 2007, 09:47 AM

Since my schedule limits exercise time currently, i am focusing much more on nutrition these summer months... crazy work schedule has made eating consistantly a huge challenge.

Basically, is a calorie stagger a good thing (getting to eat low cal one day without crashing metabolism because of eating more appropriate cals the next)?

Or is it actually crashing the metabolism to alternate between strong calorie reduction and moderate calorie reduction?

Here is a sample of my calorie intake (7/15-7/21). For an idea of how this relates to my body, my maintenance requirements, calculated on a conservative basis, are 3225/day (5'10" woman, active, goal is fatloss), and a 2lb/week loss requires 2225 daily, 1lb/wk loss requires 2725 daily.

1570 (7/15)
2254
2619 (included a cheat meal- seafood)
1500
1901
2696 (included a cheat meal- mexican)
1810 (yesterday)

**Italianangel** · July 22nd, 2007, 02:52 PM

This may give you a roller coaster effect because of the shorter time between change, but there is a program called the Burst Cycle which is similar to your idea but goes by 2 weeks spams.......now I tried it on 3 day spurts and found it worked for me so I would try it out your way and see if your body responds well or if you get drained days.
Linda

**tellico** · July 23rd, 2007, 01:21 PM

Thanks, ItalianAngel! I've been dropping weight slowly but steadily (1-2 lb/week) and haven't had any problems with energy, even on the lower cal days. Just don't want to get to the end and reach maintenance phase and have my metabolism so slow that I cannot eat a reasonable maintenance type diet

Glad to know you have tried 3-day version with good results. I'll look up "burst cycle" and see what I can learn- it's much easier to search when you have the actual term to search for! Thanks for your response

**Italianangel** · July 23rd, 2007, 01:38 PM

When I heard about and tried this, like over 10 years ago, there was very little data, now I found tons of links!!
http://www.bodyactive-online.co.uk/n...htgain/abc.asp
bb.com has this simplfied version:
http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/issa110.htm

T nation has a version although I am not a huge fan of T nation, especially being I was totally ignored at that site and it seems so clique...........some know stuff, others just try to look smart with some of there NON SCIENCE based made up articles.
http://www.t-nation.com/findArticle....e=body_59abcde
Its also called the ABCDE program.

this one has a doc of it at the end of the page, scroll down:
http://www.massivemuscle.net/diet.htm#abcde
Thats just a few.

KMKfan · September 29th, 2007, 06:56 PM

Thanks for the input, Angel. I've read a lot of your posts and they're all great.

I've been looking for something like this and also didn't really know what it was called. Thanks for the links. This also kind of helps me understand why I was able to gain so much weight when I first started seeing a trainer about 7 years ago and basically did the overeating phase compared to my previous diet...added 30 lbs in 3 months.

Thanks for all of the info you provide to the forums.