Struggling

PeterAllan3450

Finally hit my happy weight. Initially it said I needed to eat 1750 kcal to loose which I always struggled to hit 1500 kcal a day. Now to maintain its telling me I need to eat 2400 kcal and that’s not including extra kcal from exercise. I have no idea how to hit that much without eating crap which I don’t want.

TavistockToad

Peanut butter and full fat milk are a good place to start.

kommodevaran

Happy weight, but happy lifestyle? What are you eating?

PeterAllan3450

I have a happy lifestyle too. Jan 2017 I quite smoking. Lost 4 stone over last 7 months. Gym 3 days a week. And goal for this year is 10K run. May not sound far to run but for an asthmatic is pretty huge for a person who had a gym phobia. But to be fair. Over last year I’ve gone from using a inhaler more the once a day to maybe once a fortnight if that and can run just over 5k continuously. I just don’t want to ruin it all at this hurdle if you get what I mean.

kommodevaran

What I'm trying to say is that you should have no trouble eating enough, if you've ever been overweight. If you feel that good tasting food is off-limits, you'll not only risk malnutrition and underweight, but also rebound overeating and regain. Weight management is a balancing act, in the most literal sense.

PeterAllan3450

Yeah I get what you saying. But I’ve gone from eating crap to eating healthier and a balanced diet. Where I eat enough where I’m never hungry at end of the day. But eating 500 to 900 more kcal just seems a hell of a lot to what I’m used to. I’m just not sure what extra to eat on top of what I’m already eating.

nowine4me

A handful of nuts or nut butter
Full fat yogurt and cottage cheese
Avocado
Dash of olive oil

You don’t have to eat crap to increase calories.

kommodevaran

You can't just eat more on top of what you're already eating, if you're already full. You have to change how you're eating, and to do that, you have to change how you're thinking. It isn't easy. But at least it's simple: A balanced diet is enough of everything you need, but not too much of anything over time. Your diet isn't balanced if you're not getting in enough calories. No foods are healthy or unhealthy in themselves, it's all about context, amounts and frequency. You can undereat for a while, but hunger will catch up with you eventually, and brutally.

PeterAllan3450

You are right I’m looking at this all the wrong way. I’m so used to following a plan where I loose weight. I just don’t know what to change. I’m just don’t want to sabotage what I have achieved and don’t want to become unhealthy all at the same time. I just find it all to confusing

TavistockToad

PeterAllan3450 wrote: »

You are right I’m looking at this all the wrong way. I’m so used to following a plan where I loose weight. I just don’t know what to change. I’m just don’t want to sabotage what I have achieved and don’t want to become unhealthy all at the same time. I just find it all to confusing

Eating something 'unhealthy' doesn't negate the nutrition you get from everything else you eat.

PeterAllan3450

Yeah your right. It just confuses me getting the right balance.

kommodevaran

PeterAllan3450 wrote: »

You are right I’m looking at this all the wrong way. I’m so used to following a plan where I loose weight. I just don’t know what to change. I’m just don’t want to sabotage what I have achieved and don’t want to become unhealthy all at the same time. I just find it all to confusing

PeterAllan3450 wrote: »

Yeah your right. It just confuses me getting the right balance.

Many people can lose weight quite easily, but can't handle the transition to maintenance. A small minority just can't stop, and go into eating disorders, but most people just go back to old habits. Maintenance is both easier and harder than losing weight. You get to eat more food - yay! - but you can't go back to how you used to eat/move. When losing weight, you are motivated by a steady decreasing number on the scale. In maintenance, you have to keep doing what you're doing, with just a little more leeway, and forever, without any reward in the form of weightloss. So you have to find a new normal. You will have room for indulgences, but no consistent overindulgence. You have to look at food in a differerent way, neither comfort nor enemy; food just is, but food is good. Food should nourish you AND give you pleasure. But you shouldn't eat instead of dealing with stress and negative emotions. The amazing thing about getting a better relationship with food, is that it's a learning process, that you can hone, but never perfect, it's full of surprises and possibilities, exciting at times and annoying at other times. It can also help you in other parts of your life, with structure, boundaries, confidence, self-love.

PeterAllan3450

You pretty much said it in a nut shell how I feel loosing weight is easy and my head is so set in that way. I just wish it was a simple formula to maintain.

kommodevaran

PeterAllan3450 wrote: »

You pretty much said it in a nut shell how I feel loosing weight is easy and my head is so set in that way. I just wish it was a simple formula to maintain.

There is a simple formula to maintain - calories in have to be the same as calories out, over time. But that is just the technical part. To make this work in practice, you have to be willing to make an effort. Not a struggle, like in deprivation or denying yourself, but patience, kindness and discipline. It actually takes discipline to eat enough, too, not just to not eat too much. Effective maintenance is in many ways going to be easy, because it's gentler than you expected, but in other ways it's going to be hard, because it's totally different from what you expected.

collectingblues

PeterAllan3450 wrote: »

Yeah I get what you saying. But I’ve gone from eating crap to eating healthier and a balanced diet. Where I eat enough where I’m never hungry at end of the day. But eating 500 to 900 more kcal just seems a hell of a lot to what I’m used to. I’m just not sure what extra to eat on top of what I’m already eating.

So eat more of that "healthy" food. Peanut butter is healthy. Ice cream is healthy.Pastry is healthy, in moderation.

ladyhusker39

OP, this is why it's so important to slowly decrease your calorie deficit as you get closer to your goal. You're the weight you want to be at but you have no idea how to maintain that weight. You know how to under eat and you know how to over eat. You don't know how to properly fuel your body.

You're going to have to get out of your own head a learn this new skill: maintenance. There's a lesson in here for so many people trying to lose weight too fast. Aside from the health risks, you need time to learn how to do it properly for the long run.

PeterAllan3450

Yes you are all right. I lost my initial weight with slimming world and not MFP. Just my last half a stone with this app. But my consultant is no use to Adam with maintenance apart from trial and error. Throughout loosing weight fitness has been a big goal in this. Will just see how it goes.

kommodevaran

You have a consultant? Consultants are only interested in grabbing money from you. Repeat customers is what drives the dieting industry.

psychod787

PeterAllan3450 wrote: »

Yes you are all right. I lost my initial weight with slimming world and not MFP. Just my last half a stone with this app. But my consultant is no use to Adam with maintenance apart from trial and error. Throughout loosing weight fitness has been a big goal in this. Will just see how it goes.

Trail and error is the only way to find maintenance. #ell I have been at this for 5 months, and still trying to find it! It will vary on activity level, how much your bmr is reduced, muscle adaptation ect.

psychod787

Also, check out Kevin Hall's body weight tracker on the NIH website. I did after I lost weight. It uses a predictive model to show calories needed. What's really cool, is that if you go back and put in starting weight and current weight with exercise levels, it will give you a very accurate maintenance. It actually takes into account metabolic alow down and muscle adaptation. Almost has me pegged at this point. Best of luck!

PeterAllan3450

Thanks I will have a look at it.

AliceDark

Think back to when you first started losing weight. I'm sure it felt difficult or unfamiliar at first. Maintenance is no different; it relies on a slightly new set of behaviors that you haven't practiced yet. It might just take a little bit of time to recalibrate. You'll get used to it, and it'll feel normal to you (just like losing weight feels normal to you now).

bbell1985

It's not hard to add a couple hundred calories to your day. Cook with butter, have an extra snack, don't eat low fat dairy. Boom. 500-600 calories.

AnnPT77

Your own loss history is your best guide to maintenance calories:

* Look at your last 4 weeks (or around that) of loss.
* Average those weeks to get average weekly calories eaten, and average weekly pounds lost.
* Multiply average weekly pounds lost by 3500 (roughly 3500 calories in a pound) to get average weekly calorie deficit
* Add average weekly calories eaten to average weekly calorie deficit to get average weekly calories needed to maintain.
* Divide average weekly calories needed to maintain by 7 (days per week) to get estimated daily calories needed to maintain.

If you've been logging exercise separately and eating it back and want to continue that, use net calories eaten in the above arithmetic. Otherwise, use gross calories eaten.

Optionally, if you want to minimize visible (though irrelevant) scale jump from glycogen replenishment and/or increased average digestive system contents, and maybe ease your way into eating more, increase calories eaten gradually. To start, add 100-200 daily calories (depending on the size of your estimated total gap to be filled).

Eat that for a week, or until you satisfy yourself that you're not gaining fat (be reasonable - a weight-trending app and knowledge of your own fluctuation patterns will be helpful). Then add another 100 calories daily. Monitor again. Repeat until scale weight stabilizes.

If you use this approach, and keep your activity level more or less consistent, there's no possible way you'll gain a big bunch of weight suddenly. The worst that can happen is that you'll overshoot by 50-100 calories, which is less than a one-pound gain in a month's time. And it's likely that by increasing gradually, you'll have dropped a pound or two along the way from a tiny and shrinking deficit , so you'll be even up right around goal weight.

Then, set a goal weight range of a number of pounds that slightly exceeds your normal daily weight fluctuations. For example, if you rarely see more than a two pound daily fluctuation, set a range of goal weight plus/minus 3. If you go above the top of the range more than a day or three, cut back eating a little, or increase activity. If you drop below the low end, add a couple walnuts to your oatmeal.

Even if you don't have a way to estimate your maintenance calories all that accurately, you can do this "gradual add back" thing to find maintenance calories experimentally. You don't have to stress out about calculator estimates.