Just wanted to get your opinion. I'm eating 1600 calories a day (I'm 5'8" and 173 pounds). I row (hard) two hours a week, take one spinning classes, and lift twice a week, serious heavy lifting. My plan is not to eat back my exercise calories (I've never tried this), figuring that a hard row might burn 500 calories, I take two days off, so on average that's about 1200 calories net per day.

My question is, yesterday I had 200 calories left over (ate 1400, rowed an hour). I don't want to give myself excuses to eat more, but I thinking I should bank that to eat later in the week. Both because training days I eat less (go figure, probably because I'm busy) and because I don't want to go below 1200 net since I'm so active.

Thoughts? Am I just giving myself an excuse to cheat?

Plenty of people have a weekly calorie target rather than daily. If that helps you out to have enough cals when you are hungry, give it a try! If you find yourself cheating you can always change it up again. I find that if I don't eat enough on workout days (even if I'm not necessarily hungry) then I can feel like a bottomless pit the next day.

I have a weekly calorie target, and I did the same all throughout my weight loss (I'm now maintaining). I really loved it. It gave me more flexibility. Also, I lost fairly quickly (although I don't know if the calorie cycling had anything to do with that).

The only thing to watch out for is not going too low (e.g., 800 calories) in order to save up calories for another day. That can be a temptation at times.

From a WW point of view, weekly points are built into the program IF you choose to use them. Some do sparingly or not at all and some do religiously. Maybe the key is to not roll them into the next week

I never thought of doing cals weekly. I do them daily and I make sure that I have a Deficit at the end of the day verses a surplus.

even of I'm over my target deficit of 750 I don't use the xtras.

In your case as much as you work out I don't see where it could hurt to "save" every once in awhile for that special outing

I don't do Weight Watchers (I just count calories), but I'm curious about the "bank" concept. I was planning to go to Maggiano's two weeks ago, so I banked around 1,000 extra calories over the course of a few days prior to the planned restaurant visit. However, we ended up changing our plans, and we had to postpone until today. Can I use my banked calories that I banked two weeks ago, or has too much time passed? Is there a physiological explanation for how long you can save banked calories before you've lost the window to use them?

I'd say no more then a few days. Our bodies require a certain amount of fuel each day, and roll overs do not really happen. Your body will see the overage of calories you eat today as extra food, not as food making up for two weeks ago. If you eat over your calories today, I would lighten your calorie intake tomorrow to help balance it out.