Maintenance after weight loss tips

kmcampbell893

Last week I hit my goal weight and so decided to start working up to maintenance. Throughout my weight loss journey I fluctuated between 1200 - 1500 calories a day depending on how stressful my week was so that I wasn't worrying about those red numbers when I had other stuff to worry about. I decided then that to start my maintenance journey I would start at 1480 - the equivalent of 1lb a week weight loss according to MFP. However on weighing this week, I found I had gained 0.4lbs...nothing massive and probably a fairly normally fluctuation but I am concerned that this ends up being my maintenance calories as I don't want to be eating this little forever. What are some tips that you have from your own experiences of working towards maintenance...what sort of things to expect?

ILiftHeavyAcrylics

Expect your weight to jump around at first.

It's normal to gain a couple of pounds when you first increase calories. It's also normal to settle in a couple of pounds above the lowest weight you reached, because your body replenishes its glycogen stores when you start adding calories. If you were losing on 1200-1500 there's no way your maintenance is 1480 so don't worry.

My advice is to add about 100 calories every couple of weeks until you start slowly gaining. You can get a rough idea by looking back at your average intake and weekly loss. So if you were losing 1 lb per week on 1200-1500 (let's say you averaged 1350) then your maintenance would be about 1850. But that's only as accurate as you were when you were logging food and it assumes you weren't sacrificing a bunch of muscle, so it's not necessarily a hard/fast rule.

Set yourself a maintenance range. Mine is 120-125 lbs. If I go below that it's worrisome and I know I need to eat more. If I go above that for more than a couple of days it means it's probably time to reign it in a bit. But mostly I just bounce around between those two numbers.

mamadon

ILiftHeavyAcrylics wrote: »

Expect your weight to jump around at first.

It's normal to gain a couple of pounds when you first increase calories. It's also normal to settle in a couple of pounds above the lowest weight you reached, because your body replenishes its glycogen stores when you start adding calories. If you were losing on 1200-1500 there's no way your maintenance is 1480 so don't worry.

My advice is to add about 100 calories every couple of weeks until you start slowly gaining. You can get a rough idea by looking back at your average intake and weekly loss. So if you were losing 1 lb per week on 1200-1500 (let's say you averaged 1350) then your maintenance would be about 1850. But that's only as accurate as you were when you were logging food and it assumes you weren't sacrificing a bunch of muscle, so it's not necessarily a hard/fast rule.

Set yourself a maintenance range. Mine is 120-125 lbs. If I go below that it's worrisome and I know I need to eat more. If I go above that for more than a couple of days it means it's probably time to reign it in a bit. But mostly I just bounce around between those two numbers.

I second this. I too upped my calories by 100 a week until I found my maintanance. My weight also bounces around between a five pound range.

jenniferjohnsonament

I just started my maitenance too..congrats and good luck!

I had almost the same bouncing as you did....and I am moving forward another 150 cals/day this week. I am going to use a 1 lb range for me right now and later a 2-3 lb range.