About to enter maintaining and need some advice!

breakyoface

Hey,
After about a year I've finally almost reached my goal weight of 138(hoping to maintain between that and 140, or do I need a bigger range??) I'm 5'8 and I've lost almost 85lbs and am currently at 1240 cals a day and work out of a burn of about 900 cals 5 days a week. I'm thinking my maintaining will be 1740 and was going to workout a little less and burn about 600 a day and then have my food intake be at 2000 and have 300 cals left over for the day.

I guess my biggest concern is how much I should burn a day from exercise and eat back without gaining and is it really that easy to maintain?? I plan on continuing to log daily and exercise 5 days a week. I do 3 days treadmill and 2 days Bob Harper crossfit type videos.

I guess any advice will help!!

christopherlee147

I would recommend a 5lb range to maintain at, 2lbs can be easily gained with a couple of high sodium meals or during "that time of month". The only way to know how many calories to eat back is by trial and error. Work your way up from 1240 to 1740 over the course of around 3 weeks (200cals extra/day the first week, 200cals more/day the second week, and 100cals more/day in the third week). Add half your calories exercised to the 1740 like you mentioned and see what happens. You can expect to gain a little weight in the first week of maintenance, as your body is replenishing glycogen stores, water, and you'll have more food in your system. If after a couple of weeks you are still loosing, increase your calories by 100, or if you're gaining reduce by 100.

sijomial

Well done.

That range wouldn't be enough for me as I can easily vary 3lbs in a day. My range is 4lbs over to 3lbs under my goal weight. It has to be wide enough to take away the stress of normal daily (or monthly) fluctuations messing with your head.

I don't find maintenance difficult but I do have to be vigilant and continue logging my food as I have an innate ability to eat more than I really need (a.k.a. I’m greedy and like my food). My logging is a lot more relaxed though and I work on a weekly rather than daily goal for flexibility.

Your exercise should really be geared towards your fitness goals and enjoyment. Replacing the weight loss goal with a fitness related goal works well.

What proportion of your exercise calories you eat back depends on your logging accuracy, I eat 100% and always have. So really the (unhelpful !!) answer is "enough".

sgthaggard

Figuring out your TDEE is the hard part. I figured mine out mathematically by calculating my average daily deficit (lbs lost x 3500/#days) and adding that to my average daily calories consumed.

That only works though if you are maintaining approx. the same level of exercise/activity that you had throughout your weight loss.

dopeysmelly

I also figured out my TDEE and used that as a rough indicator of what I should be eating. I was a bit hesitant at eating back ALL my exercise calories, so I ate back 50% of them until I was convinced that I wouldn't put a load of weight back on.

I then rewarded myself on achieving my weight loss by getting a garmin vivofit + HRM and used that to figure out how much I should be eating. It was really close to my calcs.

I found it took a few weeks/months to figure it all out.

pinkteapot3

Hey, can I friend you? I'm also 5'8, just got back down to 140lbs which is about my goal. I plan to lose down to about 138lbs to have a bit of a buffer, then maintain around that. We can make sure we both keep logging.

Maintenance is possible! I lost 42lbs in 2009-10 and maintained until late last year when I put on 14lbs following medical treatment, when I didn't log at all and couldn't exercise (and felt miserable, so ate all the chocolate!). I've been losing on 1240 again since Jan and will be entering maintenance again soon.

When I maintained before, I used the recommended maintenance cals and ate back all my exercise cals, just as I had when losing weight. That worked for me. I know some people don't eat back all their exercise cals and just eat some. Whatever you've been doing to lose, try doing the same to maintain and see how it goes.

I think I'll switch my goal from lose 1lb a week to lose 0.5lb a week as soon as I'm under 140lbs, and do that for 3-4 weeks to ease my way in to maintenance. Last time around I found it really hard to eat the extra cals - I didn't want to because I was scared of gaining again!

nxd10

Congratulations!

I have a little bigger range - 5 pounds. But in practical terms I usually stay within 3. I did not find it hard to maintain, because I see my goal as maintaining. It's not hard - it just requires you to be consistent.

I lost 41 pounds and have maintained all of it for several years. Today is my 1000th day logging!