Recovery and finding my maintaining calories?

sflann50

Hello everyone! So I've been on my lifestyle change for 6 months now and have lost 35 lbs so far (yay!). My concern is when would it be a good time to start recovery to try and help my matabolism a bit and how will I find my true maintenance calories? So just some short background in the months of November and December I stayed at 176lbs (i weigh myself monthly because I found weighing myself weekly just devastated me because of how slow weightloss is). So I stayed at 176 and didn't lose any inches for 2 months!! (Grrrr). So I decided to take 2 weeks and just relax and eat a little more freely and start kicking butt again and I weighed myself today and found I broke my plateau with 174lbs and lost an inch off my waist (yay!!). I just started jillian micheals 30 day shred and wanted to stick with that and see what she could do fore and was wondering if I should consider recovery after? I eat 1530 according to MFP and what the Internet says to do is to increase my calorie in take my 100 a day for a week and then another 100 a day the next and so on so forth until I reach maintenance, but then I had someone say that that would never work and I'd just gain all the weight back and I'd never be able to eat at maintenance again. That just doesn't seem right to me? So my stats are 5'6 female, 174 lbs and 32% bodyfat. Also an active lifestyle. I would like to know if I should try recovery and then go back into my deficit to lose the rest of my weight or remain in my deficite? Also, how would I know what my true maintenance calories are? My starting weight was 209 and looking at my body frame, my goal right now is 160, but when I get there if I need to lose more I will. I do have a bit more muscle tone than most girls. Thanks

SusanMFindlay

I think what you're calling "recovery" is a diet break? It sounds like that would be a good idea for you. It's really not going to matter if you ramp up lowly to maintenance calories or jump right there (but make sure they're for your current weight not your start weight!)

Unless you lost your weight at Biggest Loser pace, there's no reason your metabolism would be permanently depressed due to the weight loss. Your maintenance level will be less than when you were heavier, but that's just because lighter bodies need fewer calories. If you're really worried about that sort of thing, try eating at a 100 calorie deficit to give yourself a tiny bit of wiggle room.