Calories on Maintain

gherrick0918

Hi all. I've been on the 1 lb/week plan for a while now. It has worked. I know I need to adjust for better nutrient balance, but I am getting very close now to my goal weight. I'll be looking to switch my settings to maintain.

I am sorry if this has been asked before, but I couldn't find an answer for it.

When MFP is set to maintain, if you weigh in at over or under the maintain weight, does it recalculate goals to get you back to that?

I figure that is probably something I'd have to do manually if I wanted to do it, but I wanted to ask just to be sure.

Thanks.

benevempress

MFP doesn't adjust your calorie goals unless you tell it to. It keeps your numbers the same until you change them, which is why it is important to adjust your goals periodically during your loss so your calories are based on your current weight rather than your weight 20 or 50 or 100 pounds ago.

Checking in with a scale reading that is the same as your goal weight does not trigger an automatic switch to maintenance nor an automatic change in your daily calorie goal. When you reach your stated goal, it will still show whatever you were doing before (lose/gain) and the calories associated with that previous goal until you go in to change those settings.

When you have reached your goal weight range and want to maintain, change your settings to reflect your new weight and new goal (maintain). MFP uses a formula to determine calories for maintenance that may or may not work perfectly for you. It is a good starting point, but many people have to adjust it as you go forward. You can manually adjust the number of calories for your goal (lose/gain/maintain), for example if you want to use the TDEE method or if the number that MFP gives you just doesn't work for your body.

If you want to maintain, and after a couple of weeks you are still losing on the number of calories you are eating, manually increase your calorie goal. If your trend over a couple of weeks is slowly gaining, you will have to manually decrease your calorie goal or reset your goal to lose. MFP doesn't automatically do any of this for you.

Keep in mind that many people experience a gain in scale weight immediately upon eating more calories. This is water weight as your muscles replenish their glycogen stores (which is healthy). This "gain" is not fat, so don't panic and go back to eating at a deficit and assume you can never eat more than that without regaining your lost fat. Remember, it takes eating 3,500 calories more than you are burning to gain a pound of fat. So if you have increased your calories by 250 per day (1750 per week) from your deficit level and the scale jumps up 1-5 pounds, you KNOW it cannot be fat. Be patient, keep doing what worked for you during your loss phase, and let your body adjust. After a couple of weeks you can see what the trend is and then raise or lower your calories accordingly until you find your personal maintenance number.

gherrick0918

Works for me. Thank you very much.