Maintenance Calories

loseitin_2016

How many calories would you add in to maintain a goal weight of 130?This is my first attempt at really trying to maintain a weight loss.I am 5'3",medium frame and 62 yo female if that makes a difference.I have been trying to eat 1200 calories a day to lose.

DancingMoosie

Put your stats into mfp, it will give you a number. Then you try it and see if it works.

sijomial

How fast have you been losing at 1200?
Pound a week would suggest an approximate maintenance of 1700.

Or for more precision (for something that isn't really that precise!)....
Add up all your calories eaten for last 4 weeks, add 3500 for each pound lost, divide total by 28.

Whatever method you use some fine tuning is probably required over an extended period. Try to be consistent and don't overreact to changes and you will find your trend.

swim777

loseitin_2016 wrote: »

How many calories would you add in to maintain a goal weight of 130?This is my first attempt at really trying to maintain a weight loss.I am 5'3",medium frame and 62 yo female if that makes a difference.I have been trying to eat 1200 calories a day to lose.

Sounds like you are my weight loss twin!

kgirlhart

It will depend on how active you are. I am 5'3.5", 49 years old and maintain ~122 on 2000-2300 calories per day. But I am pretty active. If you change your goal to maintain then mfp will give you a calorie goal to maintain. That will be a good place to start. But the best way really is the way @sijomial suggested using your own data to figure it out.

cwolfman13

This calculator will calculate that for you if you set your goal to maintain...

AnnPT77

The calculator will estimate ( ) it for you if you set your goal to maintain, then you can monitor your weight and adjust as needed.

Plan on maintaining within a few-pound range that encompasses your normal daily weight fluctuations, and adjust calories if you're below the low limit, or above the high limit, for several days running. No one sticks at one exact weight permanently; it'll be up & down within a range.

I agree with one of these as a better method, though:

sijomial wrote: »

How fast have you been losing at 1200?
Pound a week would suggest an approximate maintenance of 1700.

Or for more precision (for something that isn't really that precise!)....
Add up all your calories eaten for last 4 weeks, add 3500 for each pound lost, divide total by 28.

Whatever method you use some fine tuning is probably required over an extended period. Try to be consistent and don't overreact to changes and you will find your trend.

(The calculators were way off, for me, at 5'5", 61, 120s, but my own loss data gave me decent maintenance estimates.)

Or, add a 100-200 calories per day, monitor for a couple of weeks, add another 100 if you're still losing, rinse'n'repeat.

Be aware that some people, when they hit maintenance calories, see a small number of pounds jump on the scale from water weight. If you do, don't panic: If you didn't accumulate 3500 calories over maintenance for each pound you see, it isn't fat re-gain.

Congratulations on reaching goal, and best wishes for happy maintenance!

fiddletime

I'm 62 and 5'2". I'm at 1200 calories to lose slowly. I eat half my exercise calories back. Last time I was at goal weight of 125 mfp gave me 1340 calories for maintenance. That seemed about right for me and I gained when I went to 1400. You'll have to play with it.

macchiatto

I'm 41, 5'7" with a maintenance range of 128-133. I lost at 1350 (plus I ate back 1/2-2/3 of my exercise calories); maintenance for me turned out to be around 1750 on average, though it's more on days when I get more exercise in.
I agree with pp's about using MFP to give you an estimate, try it for a bit and see.

You can also "reverse diet" up to maintenance, which is what I did. You can add about 100 calories to your daily goal each week and keep gradually increasing until your weight holds steady for several weeks.

STEVE142142

First of all congratulations on your success. As other posters have said just plug your stats into mfp to figure out what your maintenance level is based on activity level.

Maintenance is a learning process it's something you're going to have to figure out over time because what you have to remember is the mfp values are based on a large population density and they may not apply to you. To give you my experience I decided to start maintenance at 220 lb. I'm a 6ft 4 male and I'm 57 years old. I totally screwed maintenance up and my way drop to as low as 204. Currently I'm at the 208 - 210 range and it's something I'm very comfortable with