Maintaining weight, having trouble?

jaymie_x0

I've been maintaining my weight for a couple months now, and people always ask me how I do it without bouncing back...well for one, I've changed my bad habits and replaced them with healthier ones but I also still loosely track maintaince calories to keep myself in check (I say loosely because I have a pretty good idea on portion sizes after tracking and weighing for a year) here's a good photo example on how to figure yours out also, he's a good person to follow for science backed info without all the fitness fluff BS.

cheryldumais

Thanks for sharing this. It was really helpful to see step 3 which is what I am going through right now and had gained 4 pounds less than a week in to maintenance. 3.5 has now come off but that's a good thing to know about. I would like to add tho that weight times 14 to 15 is way too high for an older female. My maintenance calories at 140 are 1530. I'm 61.

kgirlhart

I don't think that 14-15 is necessarily too high. I'm 49 and 14-15 gives me 1680 - 1800 calories. I am averaging about 2000 calories and still losing weight. I have been trying to be at maintenance for over a year, but I keep slowly losing. I am finding step 4 to be extremely frustrating. I am 5' 3.5" and weigh 120.

SummerSkier

oops - confused. I thought the # of 15 x your weight was your BMR. In other words the calories it takes for you to survive without any activity? You would add activity calories to that #. For me 15 is probably too high (59 short, petite). I am playing with that # on a spreadsheet right now and it's probably going to be somewhere in the 12-13/pound range for my BMR (weight 100-105 maintanence) Then my activity and exercise cals would be added. TDEE probaby around 1600. Anyway, everyone is individual so I agree with the premise that you need to keep track of what you eat, what you weight, and your activity so that over time you can see what your personal maintenance levels are. I also think those levels are NOT static so to be successful (esp if you are a lightweight elderly short gal) you have to keep an eye out and if things go outside the median either way, start detailed tracking again. Just started maintenance a few weeks ago and planning to let the data lead me... slowly adding.

MegaMooseEsq

For a similar but more detailed take, I'd recommend this article: https://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/how-to-estimate-maintenance-caloric-intake.html/. Relevant quote:

Resting metabolic rate: 10-11 cal/lb. Women use 10, men use 11. If you work something like the Harris-Benedict equation (which includes age, weight, etc.) for most realistic ranges, it’s always within shooting distance of this value. So I use the quick estimate. For example, I plugged my numbers (37 year old male, 5’7″, 155 lbs) into one of the online calculators and it spit out 1630 calories for RMR. 155*11 = 1705 calories.

Thermic effect of activity: This is always a crapshoot since it can range from a mere 10-20% over basal (if you sit all day) to 100% of basal if you’re involved in heavy activity. Assuming relatively average daily activity and training levels, a 30-50% multiplier is usually sufficient here. So 10-11 cal/lb becomes in the realm of 13-15 cal/lb. This assumes and includes an hour of exercise per day or so.

Thermic effect of food: Although it can vary slightly (especially if you look at extremes of diet), TEF usually amounts to about 10% of the total food intake. So add another 10% to the above. So 13-15 cal/lb becomes 14-16 cal/lb or so.

But of course, it's just a starting point (and don't miss the fact that step two assumes roughly an hour of exercise a day). I'm currently losing but I spent a while finding my maintenance when I was first starting out. You really have to track your own numbers for a few weeks to get a useful number. I ended up with a multiplier of about 15, which was higher than I'd expected, but it's proven accurate over the last several months.

mk2fit

Um, nope. 116 x 14 = 1624. If I only ate 1624 calories per day, I would waste away into nothing. Even excluding exercise, I would lose weight. Even the 15 multiplier is low. Base your maintenance calories on your activity level and let MFP be your guide, but not an end all, be all. MFP had me at 1600 - maybe based on your stuff?

I have been on maintenance for over two years after losing a lot of weight. It does take some experimentation to hit the right numbers, but don't assume some website knows you!

Christine_72

Surprisingly, multiplying my weight by 14 gave me the same number Fitbit gives me for my TDEE.

nowine4me

Christine_72 wrote: »

Surprisingly, multiplying my weight by 14 gave me the same number Fitbit gives me for my TDEE.

Me too. Pretty much every calculator tool I've ever tried puts me at 2,000, which also happens to be dead-on right in the "real world"

jtnkkm

Weight maintenance is pretty easy for me, I'm always unhealthy!

sijomial

3 weeks would be a bit of a silly sample size for a pre-menopausal woman who has a monthly cyclical weight gain.

But for me using the x15 multiplier at my maintenance weight of 168lbs gives me 2,520 cals.
That might be about right for winter when both my exercise and activity drops down but for nine months of the year would be at least 500 cals too low.

The method of monitoring intake and weight and adjusting based on results is sound of course but not seeing any advantage over using either a TDEE calculator or simply using myfitnesspal maintenance setting as a start point.
Very significant disadvantage of not trying to ballpark activity and exercise.

May be useful for someone not using myfitnesspal or a TDEE site or an activity tracker I suppose?

TimothyFish

Step four is all that really matters. Step one is ridiculous. It would have me starting out at 3000 calories, which is only correct with significant exercise.

deannalfisher

step one has me about 400 under what i maintain on (approx 2600ish)

Jthanmyfitnesspal

The OPs formula is not as accurate as the M. St. J., used by just about everyone, including MFP. Here's a description:

http://www.calculator.net/calorie-calculator.html

Still, the advice of finding your TDEE sweet spot by watching your weight is right on so long as you maintain about the same activity level every week. In this case, you can eat about the same number of calories daily.

I tend to vary my level of exercise, so I account for exercise separately.