Question on upping calories

ckfox95

So I've been on maintenance a couple weeks now and have upped my calories by 100 (went from 1200 to 1300). I am maintaining my weight so does this mean I need to stop upping my daily calories? I am only up to 1300 calories now and MFP said that I can have something like 1550 a day. Should I be trying to slowly increase like in 50 or 100 increments and how long should I be waiting to do this, a week, 2 weeks, a few days? What are others doing? Thanks for your help!

Azurite27

Assuming your intake is accurate, keep upping by 50-100 each week until you hit MFP's estimate for maintenance. After 3-4 weeks of consistently eating at that maintenance, re-evaluate to see if you're staying within a range, your weight will not stay at one set weight. Some weight gain is expected when you up your calories due to water retention from no longer depleting your glycogen stores. If your weight continues to trend down, keep adding calories and re-evaluating. If it trends up, cut back. It will likely take some trial and error.

allyphoe

If you logged consistently for the last couple of months, go back and add up all of your calories for a given period. Calculate your weight change over that same period (trend weight or scale weight, but if you're using scale weight, the longer the period you use the better). Change in weight in pounds times 3500 is your total deficit. Add your total deficit to your total calories eaten; that number is total calories to maintain. Divide by number of days, and that's your maintenance calories for one day.

I find that my monthly calculated maintenance calories vary quite a bit - from ~1,850 to ~2,300. But once I get out to three months, it settles down at ~2,150 for any given 3-month period.

nxd10

ckfox95 wrote: »

So I've been on maintenance a couple weeks now and have upped my calories by 100 (went from 1200 to 1300). I am maintaining my weight so does this mean I need to stop upping my daily calories? I am only up to 1300 calories now and MFP said that I can have something like 1550 a day. Should I be trying to slowly increase like in 50 or 100 increments and how long should I be waiting to do this, a week, 2 weeks, a few days? What are others doing? Thanks for your help!

I upped by 250, was maintaining, and kept it there (I was comfortable eating that much) until I started to lose again. It took almost a year. Then I upped some more.

Yi5hedr3

MFP always sets maintenance levels too high. If you eat according to them, you will gain weight.