Has anyone tried calorie counting by the week instead of by the day?

  • I'm struggling to figure out where to go with my weight loss. I like calorie counting because I have zero sense of portions and my hunger cues are messed the heck up, so I need some kind of limitation that way.

    However, calorie counting daily is kind of stressful for me, and I find that based on my activity, the weather, my menstrual cycle, stress, etc. that I'm more/less hungry some days/hours. I tried calorie cycling but inevitably I'd be on a lower cal cycle on a hungrier day.

    So I was thinking of maybe trying to count out my calories for a week (maybe make a couple dishes or a bunch of ingredients and toss them together) and then eat as much/little as I need on a given day while keeping an eye on how much I have left. So, like, I'd make enough food for all week and I can kind of eat it at my own rate. This also appeals to me so I can maybe try rewiring my hunger/eating cues so that they're not as messed up, but in a more controlled manner than plain intuitive eating without hard limits.

    Now, this could go one of a few ways:
    I could try to intuitively eat this amount of food and end up eating it all in five days and have nothing left for the rest of the week or something.

    I could end up trying to be too conservative with it and not eat enough (this is very unlikely for me so I'm not too worried).

    I could end up having more social engagements than usual (once this whole pandemic thing calms down...whenever that will be) and have no idea how many calories to remove from the weekly total so that I don't go over by adding in takeout or something.

    I could do something else not expected but equally unhelpful as the above things.



    Has anyone tried to portion out a week's worth of food and then kind of do semi-intuitive eating with it? What were your results? Pros and cons?
  • I once tried a count down. I worked out how many calories a week I was on. The as the days went by I just subtracted the calories I had for that day from the big amount. It worked OK and made a change from calorie counting. I go to Slimmers World in the UK and when I was on holiday I used this method for 'syns' a bit complicated to explain but again it worked fine. This used to be ever such a friendly, busy forum by the way