When and how to maintain?

Hey_Its_Catriona

Just looking for advice here. 18 year old female, very active. Currently eating around 1600-1700 calories per day. Was 53.2kg at last weigh-in (168cm tall). I'm not sure wether to continue losing, or transition to maintenance. If I were to try and transition, should I just jump to the numbers MFP gives me? Or build up slowly? I do not want to gain any fat, but feel like I should try and eat a little more/stop losing. I also feel pretty full on what I'm eating right now, so I'm really not sure what to do. Advice?

Sued0nim

Took me a good 3-4 months to establish maintenance and I continued to lose (about 5lbs) whilst I found my accurate scale weight range

I now fluctuate within 5-6lbs of this lower limit

Just start eating a few hundred more calories for a week or two, your weight will fluctuate upwards with extra food then drop again ...when you get to a month when it hasn't dropped back you're around maintenance

Hth

galgenstrick

You don't want to jump to maintanace all at once if you've been in a deficit for a while. You should reverse diet by increasing your daily calorie target by 100 each week.

Hey_Its_Catriona

rabbitjb wrote: »

Took me a good 3-4 months to establish maintenance and I continued to lose (about 5lbs) whilst I found my accurate scale weight range

I now fluctuate within 5-6lbs of this lower limit

Just start eating a few hundred more calories for a week or two, your weight will fluctuate upwards with extra food then drop again ...when you get to a month when it hasn't dropped back you're around maintenance

Hth

Thank you for the reply just worked out my BMI and I'm actually lower than I thought, so if I lost 5lbs whilst finding maintenance I would actually be underweight! So I probably need to avoid that. But thank you for the helpful advice.