I need help maintaining

NickHall1988

Hello,

I am having trouble maintaining my body weight. The problem is that I can't figure out exactly how many calories I need to 1, not gain weight and 2, sustain myself.

I am greatly confused by the 'activity level' utilized when calculating your tdee. I am male, 25 years of age, weighing 150 pound and I am 5 foot 8 inches tall.

Currently I have a desk job, with most of my time spent at said desk. On my lunch breaks (After eating a 400-500 cal meal) I walk around 2 miles. In addition to the two miles walked I run 5 miles a day at a brisk but I wouldn't say intense pace anywhere between 8min/9min per mile depending on how I feel that day. After the run myself and my girlfriend take a walk, anywhere from 1 mile to 2 miles depending on how long we feel like walking.

Currently I am not weight lifting but will be at some point, though I do do pushups and situps throughout the day, probably about 200 of each broken into sets of 40ish throughout the day.

My diet is pretty simply, I eat on the go a lot so I wouldn't call it entirely clean for example today so far I have had

490 cal for breakfast- egg whites, chicken, two slices of toast, cheese, and a bowl of cookie crisp (one cup cereal and a little less then half a cup of skim milk. I like just enough milk to make it wet)

For lunch I had to grab and go so I'll be having a cheese sandwich and some soup which will total out to 400 cal.

That means that for today I have had about 890 thus far. There will be a few snacks and a very large dinner (my breakfast and lunch have been a little lighter then usual, we are planning on taking a trip to our favorite restaurant). I have been shooting for anywhere between 2200 calories (the low estimate of my TDEE) and 2500 calories ( the high estimate of my TDEE).

Is there something I am doing wrong here? Thanks everyone and I appreciate your help on the matter.

hrtchoco

To be honest, when I'm maintaining, I never count calories. I just eat until I'm full but not stuffed. I also weight myself everyday. If I see weight gain, I eat a little less that day. I'm not saying it will work for everyone, but that's how I maintained my weight for 2 years+.

NickHall1988

Thanks for the suggestion but I know right off the bat that it won't work for me. I need to track things or I'll entirely loose control of them. I count the calories so I can see it, and it reminds me to stay in control of my intake. If I didn't I would probably take all the food and shove it immediately into my face, lol. I know this, because it's happened before lol.

melsinct

To be honest, when I'm maintaining, I never count calories. I just eat until I'm full but not stuffed. I also weight myself everyday. If I see weight gain, I eat a little less that day. I'm not saying it will work for everyone, but that's how I maintained my weight for 2 years+.

I have been maintaining for 1.5 years and this is how I maintain *now* (except I weigh myself 1x week). However, I needed structure when I first started maintaining. Like weight loss, there is trial and error to see what will work for you. I do strength training 2x week and walk 1-2 miles per day, on average. Some weeks I do more but this is my baseline activity. I called my self "moderately active", set MFP for maintenance (0 lb/week loss) and went with it. I kept weighing myself every couple of days. If a couple pounds started to stick, or if I lost a few pounds, I would be able to catch it early either by increasing/decreasing calories or resetting my activity level. I really had to monitor in the beginning until I found my groove. After that, maintaining was super easy. After 2-3 months, I stopped logging weekends. I finally stopped logging all together because I was 100% positive I knew what I needed to do. Once in a while I will glance at labels to get an idea of what kind of calories something has but I now no longer need to log.

Keep logging and adjust if necessary. However, every time you adjust, wait a week or two so you know what is/isn't working. Best of luck to you and welcome to maintenance!

NickHall1988

Melsinct, that is basically where I am at in the opening stages of maintenance. So I have been recording everything, though I eat basically whatever I want so long as it fits within my calorie requirements. I like being full so I tend to eat a lot of high volume foods. But I also tend to eat whatever it is that I want, I'm not into denying myself anything because I only live once. For example tonight we will be going to our favorite Chinese place, so I'm making sure to leave myself like a thousand calorie window because I know it's going to be expensive calorie wise, but as long as it fits I don't see it being a problem.

My biggest problem is, I'm not sure what my activity level actually is. With the activities and exercises that I reference would 'moderately' active be a good estimate? I take structured and planned walks between 2-4 miles daily, run 5 miles daily (6 days a week, Thursday being an off day). Not to mention I try to be more physically active in general, parking on the far side of parking lots ex. That being said I have a desk job where I spend the predominate amount of my day sitting at a computer.

So moderate? Light? How do I figure this out?

Thanks,

N

sijomial

Stop worrying about the finer detail points of estimating would be my advice!!
Everything (food, exercise, activity, BMR) is an estimate and based on averages which may or may not be right for you.

Pick a number that sounds right (you must have an idea based on what you ate to lose weight...), log accurately or at least consistently and stick to it for a month.

Then review your results and adjust as required.

acogg

Start with "light" and if you continue to lose weight, up the calories. I give myself a five pound window to bounce around in.

PaigeLittleton

I would say you need more than 2500 cals to maintain your weight, I'm guessing your losing because you are doing so much cardio so you're burning a lot of cals. When my bf weighed about 180 he lost probably 30 lbs because he burned a lot of cals but didn't eat enough to replenish and maintain weight. Also you can google 'how many calories should I eat a day' and you can find a calorie calculator. just a thought if it helps. Oh and my bf tries to eat about 3,000 a day now.

Francl27

Buy a fitbit! Seriously. It will tell you how many calories you burn every day pretty much, especially as most of your activity is walking or running, and make your life so much easier. I'd say 2200 is probably nowhere enough for you, I burn 2100 a day just walking 5 miles total.

NickHall1988

Paige,

The TDEE calculator that I am using, while selecting 'Moderate' for activity level says that I should have 2400 calories a day to maintain, MFP says I should eat at around 2,200 a day to maintain (Which I am assuming I have to eat calories back) I generally eat in between the two hitting anywhere between 2,200 and 2,400. I have only been doing it for a few weeks now but can't really tell if I have gained or lost. I weight myself in the mornings but the fluctuations are huge and constantly different. My highs are higher, but my lows are lower. For example this morning I was at 139, Monday morning I was at 148.

I'm assuming I should just let it go a few more weeks, do what I do and see if it stabilizes at something that is actually record able.

Thanks for your help everyone.

Edit- To the person that suggested a fitbit, I looked at one with intentions on buying and then it completely slipped my mind. That's a very good idea that I think would be totally helpful. Are they generally accurate?