Tedious Question

PinkPixiexox

Hi every one

I'm new to the maintenance side of MFP so I apologize in advance if this question has been asked a hundred times before.

I have around 10 or so pounds left to lose until I'm going to consider entering the maintaining phase (I'm finally nearly there!). I'm currently on 1500 calories per day and losing around 0.5 to 1lb per week.

My question is, as I'm not 100% certain of my maintenance calories - would you suggest upping my calories by 100 per week until I stop losing? I weigh in every Friday morning so if I up it to 1600 for the first week and check if I am still losing the next time I weigh in, If I'm still losing, I'll up to 1700 for the following week, If I'm still losing I'll up to 1800 .. etc etc.

Does this sound like a good way to find out my 'number'? I just want to be prepared for when I enter the next stage. I like knowing what I'm doing

Thanks (and again, I'm sorry if this has been asked a ridiculous amount!)

DancingMoosie

You could do a calculation of your estimated calorie amount for your goal weight and eat that much until you get there. Tweak calorie goal as necessary once you reach your weight goal...it should hopefully be close to what you calculated:)

PinkPixiexox

The calorie calculators give me different answers. I tweaked to get to 1500 and losing 0.5-1lb, so I would assume my TDEE is around 1800 or so. The trouble is, I have some calculators giving me around 1700, others given me around 2100. No there isn't much difference between the numbers but I wouldn't like to gain because I hadn't worked it out correctly before hand hence why I mentioned gradually increasing each week by 100 and checking that way. Would this be okay to do?

WinoGelato

That's usually the recommendation, to slowly increase so that you can more accurately pinpoint your maintenance level and not suddenly be faced with 500 extra cals/day to fill.

The other thing to keep in mind is that most people, especially women, have a maintenance range of maybe 3-5 lbs that their weight naturally fluctuates within. For me my maintenance midpoint is about 123 and I'm usually +/- 2 lbs from that at any given point during the month.

PinkPixiexox

So for example - If I decide to enter 'Maintenance mode' at 120lbs and I notice a gain, that doesn't necessarily mean I'm eating too much food? It's a tough one to get my head around. I won't be weighing daily so I don't suppose I'd notice the fluctuations too much, do you think?

WinoGelato

PinkPixiexox wrote: »

So for example - If I decide to enter 'Maintenance mode' at 120lbs and I notice a gain, that doesn't necessarily mean I'm eating too much food? It's a tough one to get my head around. I won't be weighing daily so I don't suppose I'd notice the fluctuations too much, do you think?

I think it's likely that you could see a small gain at some point, a lot of people see a temporary increase when they first up their calories as glycogen stores are replenished, but the easing into maintenance 100 cals at a time is supposed to minimize that.

The thing is to not have a knee jerk reaction to any changes and wait them out to see if things normalize. My weight is predictable by day of the week and week of the month.

PinkPixiexox

Thank you, you've been really helpful

Now I just have to get there!

sijomial

No-one is 100% sure of their maintenance calories so don't worry about that!

Calculators are a waste of time once you have been logging and losing a while - one of the biggest assumptions they make is that your logging is accurate (which is debatable for most people!).

If you are "currently on 1500 calories per day and losing around 0.5 to 1lb per week" then as a rule of thumb you have a roughly 375 cal daily deficit so your maintenance may be around 1875.

But it's not as straightforward as that, just being fully fuelled may make you feel more energetic and influence your activity and exercise levels for example.

So experiment. Walk up your calories, don't react to spikes and fluctuations (they will be fluid and food related, not fat). Look for the trend over weeks not days.

You can start walking up the calories before you get to goal if you are prepared to lose the final few pounds slowly. Then there's no sudden switch to maintenance.

msf74

PinkPixiexox wrote: »

would you suggest upping my calories by 100 per week until I stop losing?

Up to you really. You could do it that way or just do the jump up and then assess results over a suitable time frame (say about 4 weeks.)

I would suggest having a goal range rather than weight (so say you are happy weighing 130lbs the range could be 128-135 lbs.) If you see a consistent reading above 135 lbs for a period of four weeks or more then tweak your eating / exercise.

The range budgets for natural fluctuations over a suitable period of time so you can feel confident something needs changing if needs be. If you panic at the first time you see movement on the scale then you may end up eating artificially low calories believing it is your actual maintenance when in fact it isn't.

ilovesweeties

Wholeheartedly agree with the creep into maintenance way of doing it. I didn't do that and 750 kcal extra/day was too much to add at once. This led to me losing more weight after goal, which I am only now getting under control, 10 weeks in! It's a few lbs, so not the end of the world, but I wish I had believed I would still lose on a 250/day deficit. I also should have pushed through what looked like a plateau when I started to increase my calories. The process worked all the way through, I should have trusted the process in the end!

North44

I didn't have that much to lose- only 15 pounds- but when I got within a few pounds of goal I changed my loss rate to .5 lbs per week from 1lb per week. Now that I'm at goal and maintaining I only have an extra 250 or so cals to eat. That's not really that much so things aren't all that different. I feel like if I continue to lose I can just up it a bit. I think it's a good idea to ease into maintenance so to speak.

Good luck with your last bit of weight!

LivingtheLeanDream

If your losing .5 - 1lb a week that already tells you that you can eat between 250-500 cals a day more. ...so technically if you even add 250 cals you'll still lose ....win win

nxd10

When I hit the BOTTOM of my goal range, I upped my calories by 250 (I was at a 500 calorie deficit) and sat there for a while. I was losing very slowly at that point. I slowed and stuck there for a year before I started losing again, then upped it some more. It changes based on lots of things.