Making up for bigger cal days
 

OK, I've been calorie counting for a while, and I'm newly trying to zigzag calories in an attempt to get away from 160. My goal is for the week to average out to 1450 or so a day. Since I've been recording more thoroughly (in a spreadsheet, instead of my little notebook in my purse), I've been seeing that there are 'celebration days' where I eat (or drink, really) a lot of calories, and then I try to make up for it the day after by eating very lightly. Is this really unhealthy? Does this count as zigzagging? They do still average out to my calorie goal, but am I doing it wrong?

Thanks!!

I wouldn't say your doing it wrong, that's the general concept. I don't call my high cals days celebration days and they're not a free for all, but they are certainly higher than my other days. Here is my zig zag schedule
M 1650
T 1400 (try to aim closer to 1300, but I have trouble going that low)
W 1800
Th 1650
F 1500
S 2000
Su 1650

I got my schedule from freedieting.com and then I modified it a little because I thought their cals were a tad high and I wanted my highest cal day to be on Saturday. The idea is that you want your weekly total to be the same, how you divide up the cals per day doesn't really matter, but you want a pretty good change per day so that your body doesn't have a chance to adapt to a certain calorie intake and is constantly guessing.