Maintaining Weight for Beginners
Options
Replies
-
Kevalicious99 wrote: »The trick .. look at what you did in order to lose .. 1300 cal and determine how much weight you lost per week. If that was 1 lb .. it is 3500 cal or 500 cal deficit per day (debatable but we will go with it). So that means if your exercise level stays the same .. and all things being equal you could START at 1300 + 500 .. 1800 calories. Doing the math you can try that .. and see if you are maintaining. I maintained successfully for 6 months and am now gaining (on purpose), and I can just say it could take a good month til you figure it out. Then after that .. you should be good, just eat the same amount to maintain .. your exercise will of course alter what you need to eat. Too much exercise and you could find yourself in a deficit and a loss. Good luck.
i agree with this and middlehaitch. This is no 1 before all other advice - knowing the calories you need. The other good advice offered is about finding what is best way for you to keep yourself feeling satisfied, healthy and positive. But you first need to work out the number of calories you need to stay the same. Ad advised already, if you are keeping the same amount of exercise then theoretically you would need your weight loss calories (1300) plus the calories for the loss you had at the end - 500 for 1lb loss a week or 250 for 1/2lb or 125 for 1/4lb etc. But i wouldn't add it all at once - so that you can see the effects gradually without panicking if your body reacts with a false pound or two increase as it reacts to more calories. This is what I am doing. So dont panick if you put on a lb or so while experimenting. It may settle down and come off by itself. Wait for a few weeks. I had this happen. Remember you can learn from this. Just look at what MFP says was your average calorie count for the weeks. If the lb doesnt come of by itself then just drop a 100 cals a day for a week or so.
My experience
I am 5'1 @ 7 stone, 61 years old with arthritis so little exercise. I have been maintaining for 3 months. Its the first time I have been below 9 1/2 stone and first time I have ever maintained weight. I am still experimenting to find the right number of calories. This is such an important phase. Most diets fail because they do not have a transition stage. It is important that while losing weight we use MFP to understand what the best eating pattern and amounts are for us individually and how this makes us feel because we need to listen to our bodies and be familiar with the feeling of satisfaction. This continues in this transition and the maintenance phase. We keep learning.
My Calculations
.I lost 102lbs @ 1lb per week right up to my goal weight on 1200 calories. (surprised me as thought loss would slow down)
.I had tried adding a few more calories (1300-1400) to slow down weight loss and so have a gradual transfer to maintenance but I got impatient and went back to 1200 for last couple of lbs. Impatient, naughty! But it did teach me that it is easy to go back and adjust calories and therefore weight as you go along in maintenance and never again let it get totally out of control where it overwhelms you.
. Once I reached goal i calculated 1200 + 500 = 1700
. I updated MFP goals to maintenance but i knew that selecting the right activity level is tricky because even though I am sometimes bedbound with arthritis the loss i experienced had me at a higher MFP activity level so maybe i have a good metabolism (who knew after all these years). MFP shows maintenance between 1500-1700 calories for me depending on activity levels.
.So, for the last 3 months I have been on 1500 calories and so far seem to be staying the same. However I am expecting/hoping that I am still losing a tiny bit of weight which will show up after a few more months and will allow me to go up to at least 1600 calories. If I become well enough I will be able to exercise and add even more.
.Future - No matter what blow out feast I have, whether I add more exercise, am ill in bed, want to try new foods, adjust diet by adjusting ptrotein/fat/carbs etc - I can do all this in the safety of using MFP to reassure me, help me learn and give me the feeling of control without obsessiveness. This why maintenance will, for the first time, be possible and joyous.
Enjoy your maintenance. Dont be scared. Keep coming back daily to MFP to check your experiments. It is no longer diet or not diet. It is one continuous journey. In the long term it is good if we can learn to listen to our body to tell us we have had enough. But with so many hidden calories and how easy it is to get back into the habit of eating a little more and a little more, I think I will always return to MFP. i will use it daily for at least a year, then I will see if I can just use it for new foods, meals out or to touch base a few times a year. Even if I have to use it more often, I dont mind as I love learning about food and my body while enjoying it, all of it, with joy, not guilt.
0 -
' It is no longer diet or not diet. It is one continuous journey.'
^^ @shirleygra couldn't have said it better myself
0 -
I would add that while you shouldn't stress about every little calorie, if you frequently go over by 100 calories while you are at maintenance, it is a very different scenario than if you frequently go over by 100 calories a day while you are losing. For example, if you are set to lose 1 pound a week you have a built in deficit of 500 calories a day. If you go over by 100, you are still at a deficit of 400 calories and will lose weight. During maintenance, there is no built in deficit. If you go over by 100 calories on a regular basis, you will see it start to add up on the scale.
For this reason, a lot of people who maintain like to go by weekly averages. They under eat by a little each day, so they have more room on the weekends or during social occasions to indulge a little without it affecting their weight. I believe the phone app allows you to keep track of weekly totals this way.
It's also for this reason a lot of successful maintainers 'eased' their way into maintenance by choosing a smaller deficit (say .5 pounds a week) for the last 5-10 pounds. It helps you get a better idea for what numbers it takes you to lose, and keeps you from being sloppy in your logging & measuring because there is less room for error. And you gradually get used to eating more calories instead of jumping straight to adding 500 calories a day back into your diet.0 -
I would add that while you shouldn't stress about every little calorie, if you frequently go over by 100 calories while you are at maintenance, it is a very different scenario than if you frequently go over by 100 calories a day while you are losing. For example, if you are set to lose 1 pound a week you have a built in deficit of 500 calories a day. If you go over by 100, you are still at a deficit of 400 calories and will lose weight. During maintenance, there is no built in deficit. If you go over by 100 calories on a regular basis, you will see it start to add up on the scale.
For this reason, a lot of people who maintain like to go by weekly averages. They under eat by a little each day, so they have more room on the weekends or during social occasions to indulge a little without it affecting their weight. I believe the phone app allows you to keep track of weekly totals this way.
It's also for this reason a lot of successful maintainers 'eased' their way into maintenance by choosing a smaller deficit (say .5 pounds a week) for the last 5-10 pounds. It helps you get a better idea for what numbers it takes you to lose, and keeps you from being sloppy in your logging & measuring because there is less room for error. And you gradually get used to eating more calories instead of jumping straight to adding 500 calories a day back into your diet.I would add that while you shouldn't stress about every little calorie, if you frequently go over by 100 calories while you are at maintenance, it is a very different scenario than if you frequently go over by 100 calories a day while you are losing. For example, if you are set to lose 1 pound a week you have a built in deficit of 500 calories a day. If you go over by 100, you are still at a deficit of 400 calories and will lose weight. During maintenance, there is no built in deficit. If you go over by 100 calories on a regular basis, you will see it start to add up on the scale.
For this reason, a lot of people who maintain like to go by weekly averages. They under eat by a little each day, so they have more room on the weekends or during social occasions to indulge a little without it affecting their weight. I believe the phone app allows you to keep track of weekly totals this way.
It's also for this reason a lot of successful maintainers 'eased' their way into maintenance by choosing a smaller deficit (say .5 pounds a week) for the last 5-10 pounds. It helps you get a better idea for what numbers it takes you to lose, and keeps you from being sloppy in your logging & measuring because there is less room for error. And you gradually get used to eating more calories instead of jumping straight to adding 500 calories a day back into your diet.
agree. i forgot to add that it is good to mix it up a bit so you dont have exactly same calories each day. Just like some people use the 5/2 diet ie 5 days normal eat and 2 days fast/low cal (500-800), I think it is good to give your body a wake up regularly, nothet in a rut. Now I have tried 5/2 and while its not for me ( i use to fast regularly in my youth but not now), I do regularly have the ocassional day at my weight loss 1200 calories just to remind myself its not hard and remind me and my stomach that less can be enough. I use the saved cals during the rest of the week. I usually do it on a 'sleep in Sunday'. It's good not to be too regimented about keeping every day's calories, the same. You need to learn to trust yourself to have big days - eat outs etc, and know you will crawl it back on other days. I either build up to the big day(s). by having lower cal days beforehand or like i did this week when I had a 2000 cal day then came back to my MFP to divided up and subtract that extra 500 between the remaining 6 days. No guilt necessary, just maths. This has been useful in both weight loss and maintenance and will continue to be because that is how it happens in 'normal' life.0 -
You've gotten some excellent advice. I'll just stress two things:
1. Most people who lost weight end up regaining it because they failed to think of it as a lifestyle change, not a temporary diet. You got to where you are by eating well (just not as much as you need to maintain) and by staying active. Good for you! Don't throw away that hard work by thinking that you can cut back on physical activity now that you're at your goal. Back in the late 90s I cut back on exercise (new job, didn't make time) but kept eating like I had been. That's why I'm on MFP now.
2. Weighing daily can help you detect gradual weight gain, especially if you're considering not logging food. But you need to do some math, or have a website or spreadsheet do it for you. I highly recommend using an exponentially smoothed moving average of your daily morning weight, as explained by John Walker in his free e-book The Hacker's Diet. The chapters on "Signal and Noise" and "Perfect Weight Forever" explain why this is a useful tool.0 -
RunRutheeRun wrote: »middlehaitch wrote: »Hee Hee RunRutheeRun, I am old so I get even fewer calories than normal in the winter (hibernation mode has set in Boo Boo). Summer is better when I am more active, need the extra cals for wine at the end of a hot sweaty day.
Cheers, h.
And there was me thinking I was ancient lol ..I'm work harder in winter, in summer it's easier as outdoors more often but summer bodies are made in winter don't ya know ☺
Ps have you tried Pilates or strength training? If you build up muscles then they use up more cals hence being able to eat more.
Ps prosecco has less cals, would that do? ☺
Ruthie, I do aquafit 60x3, Zumba 60x2, swim x1(just learnt), rowing machine 30x1, and am building on nerdfitness at home x3! Start a 6 week Women On Weights class next week for 6 weeks just to see if heavy is for me. I would like to learn good form first, hence the class.
All that and 1483 cal TDEE x5 intense!
Summer is hazy lazy days burning cals in the yard, not counting or gaining and sloshing the wine back.
I have a special prosecco fridge in the basement for the summer months, 3 bottles in waiting; they will be drunk before the daffodils are out.
Cheers, h.
edit: sorry for going off topic OP.0 -
gosh woman, you work out A LOTmiddlehaitch wrote: »RunRutheeRun wrote: »middlehaitch wrote: »Hee Hee RunRutheeRun, I am old so I get even fewer calories than normal in the winter (hibernation mode has set in Boo Boo). Summer is better when I am more active, need the extra cals for wine at the end of a hot sweaty day.
Cheers, h.
And there was me thinking I was ancient lol ..I'm work harder in winter, in summer it's easier as outdoors more often but summer bodies are made in winter don't ya know ☺
Ps have you tried Pilates or strength training? If you build up muscles then they use up more cals hence being able to eat more.
Ps prosecco has less cals, would that do? ☺
Ruthie, I do aquafit 60x3, Zumba 60x2, swim x1(just learnt), rowing machine 30x1, and am building on nerdfitness at home x3! Start a 6 week Women On Weights class next week for 6 weeks just to see if heavy is for me. I would like to learn good form first, hence the class.
All that and 1483 cal TDEE x5 intense!
Summer is hazy lazy days burning cals in the yard, not counting or gaining and sloshing the wine back.
I have a special prosecco fridge in the basement for the summer months, 3 bottles in waiting; they will be drunk before the daffodils are out.
Cheers, h.
edit: sorry for going off topic OP.
...special Prosecco! interesting LOL
0 -
RunRutheeRun wrote: »
gosh woman, you work out A LOTmiddlehaitch wrote: »RunRutheeRun wrote: »middlehaitch wrote: »Hee Hee RunRutheeRun, I am old so I get even fewer calories than normal in the winter (hibernation mode has set in Boo Boo). Summer is better when I am more active, need the extra cals for wine at the end of a hot sweaty day.
Cheers, h.
And there was me thinking I was ancient lol ..I'm work harder in winter, in summer it's easier as outdoors more often but summer bodies are made in winter don't ya know ☺
Ps have you tried Pilates or strength training? If you build up muscles then they use up more cals hence being able to eat more.
Ps prosecco has less cals, would that do? ☺
Ruthie, I do aquafit 60x3, Zumba 60x2, swim x1(just learnt), rowing machine 30x1, and am building on nerdfitness at home x3! Start a 6 week Women On Weights class next week for 6 weeks just to see if heavy is for me. I would like to learn good form first, hence the class.
All that and 1483 cal TDEE x5 intense!
Summer is hazy lazy days burning cals in the yard, not counting or gaining and sloshing the wine back.
I have a special prosecco fridge in the basement for the summer months, 3 bottles in waiting; they will be drunk before the daffodils are out.
Cheers, h.
edit: sorry for going off topic OP. ...special Prosecco! interesting LOL
and yet your TDEE is low...have you checked that out lately again? or tried upping by 100 to see if you can reverse diet?? that's what I'm doing, currently maintaining on 2100 and reckon I can eat a bit more yet.
0 -
RunRutheeRun wrote: »middlehaitch wrote: »Hi, I'm 5'1 and 100- 105, to maintain I eat at 1200 and eat back my exercise, or eat at my TDEE which is 1483.
IIFYM.com has a good TDEE calculator.
It takes a couple of months to get your calories right.
Cheers, h
^^ agree with this, well not the bit about eating 1200 but that's cos I'm very active at 5ft 2" and my TDEE is 2200. its about finding your maintenance calories and it takes a little time.
just out of curiosity, what weight are you maintaining at eating @ a TDEE of 2200? I'm 5'1" and playing around with maintenance - i'm about 107 currently, wouldn't mind staying somewhere between 104 - 108 for the long term, but still trying to figure out how much i can eat. I'm pretty active too, a daily distance runner. Anyway, just curious about the rest of your stats.
0 -
michellemybelll wrote: »RunRutheeRun wrote: »middlehaitch wrote: »Hi, I'm 5'1 and 100- 105, to maintain I eat at 1200 and eat back my exercise, or eat at my TDEE which is 1483.
IIFYM.com has a good TDEE calculator.
It takes a couple of months to get your calories right.
Cheers, h
^^ agree with this, well not the bit about eating 1200 but that's cos I'm very active at 5ft 2" and my TDEE is 2200. its about finding your maintenance calories and it takes a little time.
just out of curiosity, what weight are you maintaining at eating @ a TDEE of 2200? I'm 5'1" and playing around with maintenance - i'm about 107 currently, wouldn't mind staying somewhere between 104 - 108 for the long term, but still trying to figure out how much i can eat. I'm pretty active too, a daily distance runner. Anyway, just curious about the rest of your stats.
Hi, I'm 5ft 2" and maintaining 134lbs which is light enough for my medium frame
my stats are 34 chest/ 26.75" waist/ 35.5" hips - though its been a while since I took them and I know they're a bit smaller now. I'm in better shape now than when I was in my 20s and weighing 120lbs which was light for me then. I run 5 to 6 miles a day/ 6 days a week, plus walk another 3 or 4 miles per day and 3 x strength training of 30 min sessions a week.
What are you eating at currently?
I currently am doing a bit of reverse dieting and slowly increasing my cals, I definately maintain on 2100 and possibly can add a few 100 more yet, I am doing 2100 for another few weeks and then I'll up them again.0 -
I read this journal article "Long-term weight loss maintenance" via American Society for Clinical Nutrition http://bit.ly/1I4QuRa
The summary says six key strategies for longterm success at weight loss maintenance:
1) engaging in high levels of physical activity;
2) eating a diet that is low in calories and fat;
3) eating breakfast;
4) self-monitoring weight on a regular basis;
5) maintaining a consistent eating pattern; and
6) catching “slips” before they turn into larger regains.
That all looks reasonable (except maybe the bit about fat). I think it's also important to keep in mind (especially as a short woman) that the difference between maintaining and losing is a few hundred calories.
It really has to be a healthy LIFESTYLE. Not just lifestyle as a euphemism for a temporary weightless diet.
0 -
RunRutheeRun wrote: »michellemybelll wrote: »RunRutheeRun wrote: »middlehaitch wrote: »Hi, I'm 5'1 and 100- 105, to maintain I eat at 1200 and eat back my exercise, or eat at my TDEE which is 1483.
IIFYM.com has a good TDEE calculator.
It takes a couple of months to get your calories right.
Cheers, h
^^ agree with this, well not the bit about eating 1200 but that's cos I'm very active at 5ft 2" and my TDEE is 2200. its about finding your maintenance calories and it takes a little time.
just out of curiosity, what weight are you maintaining at eating @ a TDEE of 2200? I'm 5'1" and playing around with maintenance - i'm about 107 currently, wouldn't mind staying somewhere between 104 - 108 for the long term, but still trying to figure out how much i can eat. I'm pretty active too, a daily distance runner. Anyway, just curious about the rest of your stats.
Hi, I'm 5ft 2" and maintaining 134lbs which is light enough for my medium frame
my stats are 34 chest/ 26.75" waist/ 35.5" hips - though its been a while since I took them and I know they're a bit smaller now. I'm in better shape now than when I was in my 20s and weighing 120lbs which was light for me then. I run 5 to 6 miles a day/ 6 days a week, plus walk another 3 or 4 miles per day and 3 x strength training of 30 min sessions a week.
What are you eating at currently?
I currently am doing a bit of reverse dieting and slowly increasing my cals, I definately maintain on 2100 and possibly can add a few 100 more yet, I am doing 2100 for another few weeks and then I'll up them again.
Thanks for the info! I'm averaging about 2000 per day I think, although I haven't been super accurate this week with counting (read: I think I've been eating more than that on average this week). However, I didn't gain. I run anywhere from 7-10 miles per day, and sometimes pair that with some yoga.
0
Categories
- All Categories
- 1.4M Health, Wellness and Goals
- 392K Introduce Yourself
- 43.6K Getting Started
- 259.8K Health and Weight Loss
- 175.7K Food and Nutrition
- 47.4K Recipes
- 232.3K Fitness and Exercise
- 402 Sleep, Mindfulness and Overall Wellness
- 6.4K Goal: Maintaining Weight
- 8.5K Goal: Gaining Weight and Body Building
- 152.8K Motivation and Support
- 7.9K Challenges
- 1.3K Debate Club
- 96.3K Chit-Chat
- 2.5K Fun and Games
- 3.4K MyFitnessPal Information
- 23 News and Announcements
- 998 Feature Suggestions and Ideas
- 2.4K MyFitnessPal Tech Support Questions