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What's your plan for maintenance?

macchiatto
macchiatto Posts: 2,890 Member
in Social Groups
I know people on here are doing LC for various reasons beyond weight lossloss and dome of you are already at maintenance. I'm doing it mostly for weight loss but I'll probably always need to stay somewhat low carb because I have PCOS and probably insulin resistance.

I'm tentatively thinking I might very slowly increase carbs as I get within a few pounds of my goal (currently 10 lbs away) and then maybe gradually work up to about 100 grams of carbs per day, and gradually increase calories to maintenance level. Does that sound good? Is there a recommended way for transitioning out of keto?
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Replies

  • wabmester
    wabmester Posts: 2,748 Member
    I took the approach that I didn't want a short-term diet, so I considered maintenance from day 1. That meant my diet was sustainable from day 1, and I didn't need to change anything once I reached my goals.

    For me, that was around 100g carbs, but it was probably more about the type of carbs than the quantity. I still don't eat grains or sugary processed food, but I don't restrict veggies or nuts. I still limit starch and fruit and anything that triggers cravings or that seems to increase appetite.

    If you want to stay keto, that works too. Just keep adjusting your fat intake to match your caloric needs, and leave carbs and protein alone.

    If you want to exit ketosis, it's probably best to gradually increase carbs to you reach your new carbs level. Ketosis does induce a physiological insulin resistance, so a sudden increase in carbs may lead to hypoglycemia since you're not used to the surges in insulin.
  • baconslave
    baconslave Posts: 7,009 Member
    I'm close to maintenance. I was 2lb to goal but then I had a carb cheat, followed by a cold from hell, and now I have a kidney infection. So I'm at 4lb to goal.

    I'm just planning on increasing calories not carbs. I tried going to under 100g instead of <50, but my cycle gets weird, and I start getting skin breakouts. Now, that could just be temporary until I get adjusted to being out of ketosis. :grey_question: I'd need to try it for a month or more to see. But I have a hard time staying out of ketosis at under 100 sometimes, which has me yo-yoing in and out, and I don't feel really well doing that. It's going to take some planning and making sure I have some low-carb bread on-hand and some other foods that will solidly keep me out.

    I'm at under 50g right now. I may go hardcore back down to 20g total for a bit to get to goal. This "close to goal" *kitten* is hard let me tell ya. My body is fighting me tooth and nail. :cry:

    As far as advice for transitioning out of keto, I'd just gradually increase carbs by 10 or 15 every week until you get to your upper limit, just like you plan to do with your calories.
  • Sunny_Bunny_
    Sunny_Bunny_ Posts: 7,140 Member
    I plan to stay in ketosis even at very low levels is fine with me. I'm really interested in the brain health aspects of it and I believe that it will be the best plan for my long term health. As someone with ADD and that always struggled with memory abilities that are obviously not the same as most people have, I am really concerned about keeping my brain as healthy as possible as I get older. Even with the ketone effects I feel have been helpful in dealing with ADD symptoms, I am still medicated for it as well, and I plan to try cutting that down and hopefully eliminating it completely if I can feel "normal" without it.
    Anyway, I'm rambling... Train of thought, leaving the station! ;)
    I pretty much think I will never eat grains, pasta, starches or sugar again no matter what. So I will probably just stop counting calories/carbs and eat based on hunger from the foods that don't include those things.
  • nvmomketo
    nvmomketo Posts: 12,019 Member
    wabmester wrote: »
    If you want to exit ketosis, it's probably best to gradually increase carbs to you reach your new carbs level. Ketosis does induce a physiological insulin resistance, so a sudden increase in carbs may lead to hypoglycemia since you're not used to the surges in insulin.

    This is true. I was letting my carbs creep up from under 20g to well over 30g, and sometimes as high as 50g. My BG was right back to prediabetic levels.

    Then I went lower calorie (with fat fasts) and very low carb to get back on track. My BG dropped like a rock. I was getting in the low 3's (55-65) over a few days. Yuck. It felt pretty poorly until my ketone production kicked it up a notch to compensate.

    My maintenance plan is now to add in more fats and maybe a bit more protein (espeially earlier in the day since late protein lumps seem to affect my BG more). I plan to keep my carbs below 20g unless I bump up the intensity and regularity of my exercise by a fair bit. I have IR and my body seems overly sensitive to carb levels.

    I imagine my calorie level will be 2000-2300 with 75% fat, 20% protein and <5% carbs. Same foods, just more, except in carbs unless timed around intense exercise.
  • GaleHawkins
    GaleHawkins Posts: 8,159 Member
    Just more of the same for life. :)
  • nicintime
    nicintime Posts: 381 Member
    I think this is a hugely important question to consider - I haven't opined much before because I hate typing on my phone and that is the way I usually access MFP. So, apologies in advance to my short attention spanned friends, here are some questions around the question that hopefully will help answer the question! :smile:

    **You should think about this! Seems to me that just sluffing your way into maintenance will pretty much guarantee a weight rebound or an unpleasant experience.

    **Why am I doing keto? There are many motives, some of them not so great, IMNSHO. How you honestly answer that question will lead to a strategy for maintenance. Some of us have so far to go weight wise that we don't even bother going there mentally because we're not sure we can hit our goals. Others just want to loose 20 or 30 lbs to "look good". Others have medical issues as their primary motivator.

    **Do you have any self-defeating mind-sets? I had to recognize in myself the horrible way of thinking that part of me wanted to just get to my goal weight so that I could "eat whatever I wanted to", which in another life was simply a bunch of terrible carbage. I had to have a Long term Mind-set first, then second a "I will no longer treat my body as a human garbage can just because the garbage is sweet and tasty" Mind-set. Some mind-sets practically guarantee you will never make it to maintenance, and if you do you will fail to stay there.

    **A Mental 'Stall Defeating Strategy'. In another thread I asked the quesion - Would you eat ketogenically even if you knew you would never lose another pound? It's a great question, and if you answer affirmatively I think you will be able to get through a so-called "stall" (most people who say they are stalled are not), and you will have a natural lead in to a maintenance strategy.

    **How Much Should I Weigh? This is NOT an easy question to answer! And it is a question that a number won't give you a GOOD answer to - what about body composition? What about "skinny-fat"? What kind of life would I like to live? What health factors must I consider? All of these questions must be asked along the way, and the answers will change as you progress.
  • daylitemag
    daylitemag Posts: 604 Member
    I'm so far away from my goal that I would need a high powered scope to see it. With that said, this WOE feels like something I can do forever. I may one day increase my carb level somewhat but being very choosy about the carbs I will eat. I don't see grains or processed sugar as something I want to add back, but I could see some fruit.
  • nicintime
    nicintime Posts: 381 Member
    My Maintenance Strategy So Far:

    **Figure out when (weight-wise) to start maintenance (which I haven't).

    **I want to remain in Ketosis. So.... at this point I will purchase a blood ketone monitor and start testing myself so that I know that I am at a millimolar place where I am in nutritional ketosis and experiencing the benefits that I want to experience. Right now I don't use either strips or blood monitoring. At 20 grams carbs, plus by other symptoms, I KNOW I am in ketosis. No reason to measure. When I move into maintenance, measuring will be critical!

    **S L O W L Y increase carb levels, probably 10 carbs at a time, and stay at that level for at least a week, probably two, so that I can be SURE that what is happening in my body is due to that carb increase. I will be looking for (see above) a. Ketone Levels below what I want, & b. unacceptable weight gain (see below).

    **Stay on my Minimum Protein Grams, and intentionally increase fat calories. And monitor above. I am already a careful tracker, but for the first 2 or 3 months of maintenance I will track MUCH more carefully, the goal being to find a healthy, strong place to live.

    **Weigh Daily & Average - I currently weigh once a week because I can't emotionally handle the scale. At this point I will need a fairly accurate reading, and between water weight, a skipped bowel movement, or the alignment of the planets my weight can vary a bunch.

    So.... the counter-intuitive part of my strategy is that I will actually be weighing and measuring WAY more carefully and often in initial maintenance than I do now in my weight loss phase. But it's only counter-intuitive when I don't think about how important maintenance is for my ultimate goal, which is life and health.

    Interested in hearing other folk's thoughts about this!
  • Abm4n
    Abm4n Posts: 529 Member
    @baconslave: This "close to goal" ***** is hard let me tell ya. My body is fighting me tooth and nail. :cry:

    I hear you. I'm less than 2kg from my goal weight. Yesterday I had a calorie deficit of 1,600 yesterday and still put on a tiny bit of weight. :*
  • Abm4n
    Abm4n Posts: 529 Member
    @Sunny_Bunny: I am really concerned about keeping my brain as healthy as possible as I get older.

    As a bit of a geeky guy I am finding the brain science fascinating. I think that I am having a second adolescence as my brain grows new synapses from intermittent fasting.

  • wabmester
    wabmester Posts: 2,748 Member
    edited November 2015
    I'm a few months into maintenance now, and I continue to hang out here due to FEAR. Fear of the regain stats. And fear of slippery slopes.

    In terms of weight goals, why do you have one? Low-carb works mostly by reducing appetite. I set an arbitrary weight loss goal, but I shot below that simply because I wasn't hungry. I let my weight reach equilibrium with my hunger, and I'm pretty happy at this weight.

    Now I focus more on body recomposition with exercise. If you thought weight loss was slow, wait till you try recomp. :)

    Why increase your carbs? What are you missing now?

    Be careful what you reintroduce. I can eat veggies all day long without any increase in cravings, so I simply don't worry about veggies.

    But if I eat ANY baked good, that sends me into a psychological spiral. "Just a little bit" becomes "that wasn't so bad" becomes "let's try a bit of this too" becomes "pizza!" becomes "I need to go back on low-carb."

    Whatever you change, keep away from that slippery slope.
  • Abm4n
    Abm4n Posts: 529 Member
    I'm trying one meal a day as I approach my maintenance weight.
  • umayster
    umayster Posts: 651 Member
    It never occurred to me that this could be a short term thing until I read people using low carb for weight loss and then planning on getting off.

    It is hard for me to think that I could continue to control my intake without low carb levels. For me, carbs beget carbs - the 'eat signals' become frequent, non stop and willpower killing. I'm pretty set on this as a way of life - with random, infrequent days of mild self indulgence after hitting goal.
  • nicintime
    nicintime Posts: 381 Member
    wabmester wrote: »
    I'm a few months into maintenance now, and I continue to hang out here due to FEAR. Fear of the regain stats. And fear of slippery slopes.

    Amen brother! Right there with you!
    wabmester wrote: »
    In terms of weight goals, why do you have one? Low-carb works mostly by reducing appetite. I set an arbitrary weight loss goal, but I shot below that simply because I wasn't hungry. I let my weight reach equilibrium with my hunger, and I'm pretty happy at this weight.

    Great point. And for now, I actually don't have a weight loss goal. I'm too far away (80lbs?, 60 lbs?) to even guess. What will my body feel like then? Too many unknowns for any firm goal. I like what you did (are doing), and there is much to recommend that approach.
    wabmester wrote: »
    Now I focus more on body recomposition with exercise. If you thought weight loss was slow, wait till you try recomp. :)

    Excellent. I really think that this is where I will end up as well. But if I can be "worrying" about body recomp rather than being 150 lbs overweight I think that would be a bit of heaven! :smile:
    wabmester wrote: »
    Why increase your carbs? What are you missing now?

    Be careful what you reintroduce. I can eat veggies all day long without any increase in cravings, so I simply don't worry about veggies.

    Excellent advice. I'm not going to eat bread, pasta, potatoes, etc. Period. However, I am pretty restrictive now - not many nuts, and I don't eat low carb berries (which I absolutely love), and those are the carbs I will reintroduce.
    wabmester wrote: »
    Whatever you change, keep away from that slippery slope.

    True, true! And this is why I think one needs to think with even more clarity about maintenance than about the weight loss.

    In one sense, weight loss is "easy" (how many hundreds of pounds have I lost in the last decade?!? Sigh...).

    It is STAYING at a healthy weight that I have been absolutely unable to do for more than 3 decades. It's why I need a plan for that more than anything else and will be working on it strongly.

    Thanks for the great conversation here!









  • macchiatto
    macchiatto Posts: 2,890 Member
    Thanks so much for all the input! This is interesting. I had stumbled on this WOE mostly for weight loss and dealing with PCOS but I also have MS so I'm interested to learn more about the effects on brain health.

    For me, I had reached goal weight in the past ... several times. :p I had yoyo'ed in a 20-lb range for much of my adult life and a few years ago I decided to try to go 10 lbs below that range and after getting there, I ended up deciding 7-8 lbs below that range was best for me.

    Then from Aug '14 to Aug '15 I gradually gained 20 lbs. I did fight it along the way; my weight chart has a lot of dips but too many climbs. Med changes led to increasing carbs to deal with stomach upset so my previous low-carb diet was no longer working for me. My goal has been to re-lose those 20 lbs and fit back into the rest of my clothes.

    However, "skinny fat" is my natural tendency so I am truly more concerned about body fat % and how clothes fit than the # on the scale. I might try a recomp once I get my BF% lower. My LBM is relatively low; I'm 5'7" and at 142 lbs (goal is 132-133) but my body fat percentage is higher than one might expect with those stats; I'm guessing 32-34% or so, and so much of it is in my midsection. I know most women of my height and weight wear clothes 2-3 sizes smaller than what I wear, mostly because of how things fit through the belly/hips. I do plan to start doing more HIIT and lifting soon.
  • lithezebra
    lithezebra Posts: 3,670 Member
    I've been maintaining for about 20 years. Even in maintenance, it's important to make changes sometimes.
  • Abm4n
    Abm4n Posts: 529 Member
    As a creative, exploring person with an insatiable curiosity I don't even LIKE the term "maintenance". I prefer to think of it as a process of ongoing refinement or continuous improvement. The Japanese call it "kaizen".

    [Kaizen is the practice of continuous improvement. Kaizen was originally introduced to the West by Masaaki Imai in his book Kaizen: The Key to Japan's Competitive Success in 1986. Today Kaizen is recognized worldwide as an important pillar of an organization's long-term competitive strategy. Source: Wikipedia]
  • nvmomketo
    nvmomketo Posts: 12,019 Member
    Abm4n wrote: »
    As a creative, exploring person with an insatiable curiosity I don't even LIKE the term "maintenance". I prefer to think of it as a process of ongoing refinement or continuous improvement. The Japanese call it "kaizen".

    [Kaizen is the practice of continuous improvement. Kaizen was originally introduced to the West by Masaaki Imai in his book Kaizen: The Key to Japan's Competitive Success in 1986. Today Kaizen is recognized worldwide as an important pillar of an organization's long-term competitive strategy. Source: Wikipedia]

    That is a really good way of looking at it. :)
  • GlitzArmstrong
    GlitzArmstrong Posts: 15 Member
    I went into maintenance in August but was still about 10 lbs. from my goal weight . I got out of the habit of tracking,and noticed I still could stay in a small range just little ups and downs. I started this WOE in April 2015 and my body changed very quickly and pretty happy where I am now. My thought was if I can maintain without tracking this truly is a WOE and not a diet and I can do this forever! I will tackle the last 10# after the holidays
  • macchiatto
    macchiatto Posts: 2,890 Member
    Abm4n wrote: »
    As a creative, exploring person with an insatiable curiosity I don't even LIKE the term "maintenance". I prefer to think of it as a process of ongoing refinement or continuous improvement. The Japanese call it "kaizen".

    [Kaizen is the practice of continuous improvement. Kaizen was originally introduced to the West by Masaaki Imai in his book Kaizen: The Key to Japan's Competitive Success in 1986. Today Kaizen is recognized worldwide as an important pillar of an organization's long-term competitive strategy. Source: Wikipedia]

    Friends of mine actually named their son Kaizen so I'm familiar with this term and meaning! :) That's an interesting way of looking at it.
    To be honest re where I'm at right now, kaizen sounds tiring though. :P I've yoyoed for so long that at some point I just want to be able to coast for a while (within safe guidelines so I don't start yoyoing again).

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