Question about zig zagging

How come zig zag schedules have you eat something different everyday as opposed to just up, down, up, down. Here is an example:

Monday: 1,500 calories
Tuesday: 1,800 calories
Wednesday: 1200 calories 
Thursday: 1,800 calories 
Friday: 1,200 calories 
Saturday: 2,200 calories
Sunday: 1,200 calories

This one has intake all over the place. How come it can't be something like this (just examples)?:

M:1900
T: 1500
W: 1900
Th: 1500
F: 1900
Sa: 1900
Su: 1500

Is it that the body will get used to high, low, high, low, high, low and not high, medium, low, high, medium, etc? The bottom one is my schedule. The top one is an example schedule from an article about zig zagging. 

Thanks!

I am certainly no expert, I do believe that this IS that you body will get used to a certain amount... I once heard that 3 or 4 days of a pattern and your body recognizes it and begins to adapt to it. I think the key to zig-zagging is not offering a recognizable pattern so your body is constantly working to its peak performance with what it is getting. And this theory includes the idea of a way to more accurately mimic our primitive ancestry where food could be bountiful one day and not found the next.

That was my understanding of how the system was supposed to work anyway, hope it helps.

~Namaste

Katt

Either way, it works the same. You'll get the same results as long as you stay within your weekly allowance. I personally like yours better, as I'm not too fond of that itty bitty 1,200 days it gave you. But the best way to go is to not plan it at all. Let your body decide when it wants more food, and when it doesn't need as much. "Zig-zagging" is more true to a normal daily life even for non dieters.

The top one isn't relevant. It's just a random example to show the differences. One schedules goes High, medium, low in consumption and the other goes High, Low, High, Low in consumption. Both are not comparable.

My understanding is that all the evidence related to zig zagging calories is purely anecdotal (individuals claiming it worked for them) and that there is absolutely no rigorous scientific evidence to support that it really does anything more than reducing daily calories.

I would guess that a lot of people zig zag naturally without even thinking about it (I know I do). Depending on how much time I have in the day and my activities, I naturally fluctuate within about a 500 calorie range from day to day.

The first problem with anecdotal evidence with something like this is that you generally only hear about the positive results.  Out of 1000 people who've tried zig zagging, you could have 10 who think zig zagging worked for them and 990 who don't.  The 990 generally aren't going to go blog about their experiences and talk about it on forums, but the 10 will, so all you see is people saying it works.

The second problem with anecdotal evidence is that there are *way* to many other variables to consider for the individual.  Types of food, types and quantity of exercise, amount of sleep, stress, other health conditions, environmental factors, etc. etc. etc., that individuals can't possibly honestly state that factor X is absolutely the cause of result Y.  They may think it was, but it could just as easily been a combination of any number of other factors, unbeknownst to the individual.

The only way to reliably determine if zig zagging (or any other diet scheme) is any different than just reducing calories is a properly controlled and peer reviewed scientific study with a suitably large sample of participating subjects. My understanding is that any such studies that have been conducted have shown no statistically significant difference in this case.

That said, as long as you get your mimimum calories per day and aren't starving yourself, zig zagging probably doesn't hurt, and if it forces you to pay more attention to the calories you eat each day, resulting in an overall reduction in caloric intake, then either of the two schedules you mentioned above should work equally great for you.