How to up calories to maintainence without gaining

healthyandhappy120301

I have reached a weight where I am quite healthy and want to maintain it but having dieted for so long, I don't know if upping my cals with make me gain. Can anyone advice me on this?

Height and weight: 171cm and 59kg
Exercise: ~70 mins a day for at 6 to 7 times a week (burning at least 600 cals/session)

kommodevaran

Upping calories to maintenance means that you'll neither lose more weight nor gain weight. Finding your real maintenance calories can take some time and trial and error, though. Sticking to them will take discipline.

Your bodyweight will fluctuate from day to day, depending on carb/salt intake, water retention in muscles after exercise, constipation, TOM, and for no good reason. So it's smart to have a few pounds goal weight range instead of a goal weight.

healthyandhappy120301

Forgot to add that I was eating around 1300-1500 a day (usually 1300) without eating back exercise cals. Online calculators say that my TDEE is around 2100 and BMR is around 1400.

sijomial

Upping your calories will only result in sustained fat gain if you go into a surplus and stay in a surplus - the same energy balance rules that made you lose weight haven't changed.

Your recent rate of loss is a good guide but some fine tuning may well be required.

iheartmakeup01

Upping your calories slowly by increasing 100 calories will weekly will help you transition from dieting to slowly reverse dieting. You will maintain the same weight but you also gain some fat. With your daily expenditure, you will most likely even possible notice that you are continually losing weight even if you increase you calories. What are your current macros

collectingblues

It's common to gain 3-4 pounds when your glycogen stores and water replenish.

If you want to have the exact weight you are now to be the center of your range, you should lose another 2 kg to absorb that gain.

sijomial

iheartmakeup01 wrote: »

Upping your calories slowly by increasing 100 calories will weekly will help you transition from dieting to slowly reverse dieting. You will maintain the same weight but you also gain some fat. With your daily expenditure, you will most likely even possible notice that you are continually losing weight even if you increase you calories. What are your current macros

Ref the bold - why would there be any fat gain?
Fat gain happens in a surplus, unless OP has been losing at a snail's pace 100 calories isn't going to flip them into a surplus!

LivingtheLeanDream

Change your settings on MFP to maintain and eat those calories. Yes its true you might see a little gain (and its not fat gain) but its only temporary and will settle down within a few weeks. That's why some people ease into maintenance slowly by not going straight to eat at maintenance cals but slightly less, so say maintenance cals were 250 cals more a day than you currently eat, then you could eat 125 more for a short period and then adjust them up.

nowine4me

Or, keep your food intake at the current level and reduce your exercise.

walterm852

Its trial and error as everyone is different. Just add in and watch it yourself and make adjustments as you go

jillerickson2017

Reverse diet by repairing your metabolism, keep macro % the same overall and add 100 calories every week or two to not gain weight. I maintained same weight and added calories back in to get from 1400 cal/day now up to 2300 cal/day. It’s great!

AnnPT77

jillerickson2017 wrote: »

Reverse diet by repairing your metabolism, keep macro % the same overall and add 100 calories every week or two to not gain weight. I maintained same weight and added calories back in to get from 1400 cal/day now up to 2300 cal/day. It’s great!

If someone woo-ed this because of that "metabolism repair" phrase, I'd suggest considering this "gradual add" strategy anyway - it's a good one.

And anecdotally, some people do seem to find that as they add back calories gradually, their energy level subtly picks up a little without their striving explicitly for it, increasing their daily non-exercise activity and/or increasing their exercise intensity, so that they end up at higher maintenance calories than they originally expected.

Personally, I probably wouldn't call that "metabolism repair", and it doesn't seem to happen automagically in all cases, but it's not a total sparkly pink unicorn, either.

SummerSkier

agree with Jill and Ann. I would NOT have thought it possible but it works exactly as they describe. At least for me. The gradual add and monitor is the way to go. You will be surprised at how much you can continue to add. I did 100 every other week for a while then ended up adding more at a time. Whether it's repairing the metabolism or reverse dieting or just your body learning to use vs store those additional calories. Who knows?! It's all good and worth a try for anyone starting maintenance for sure!

iheartmakeup01

I’m not talking about the weekly 100 calorie increase, I’m talking about the surplus that takes to hit maintaince.

Ref the bold - why would there be any fat gain?
Fat gain happens in a surplus, unless OP has been losing at a snail's pace 100 calories isn't going to flip them into a surplus.

sijomial

iheartmakeup01 wrote: »

I’m not talking about the weekly 100 calorie increase, I’m talking about the surplus that takes to hit maintaince.

Huh?
I've no idea what you are trying to say!

Maintenance is a calorie balance, surplus is over maintenance, deficit is under maintenance.

Cancelling out your deficit by slowly raising calories until you hit maintenance does not equal surplus and fat gain.

WinoGelato

How much weight did you lose and in what time period? Was the loss steady and consistent?

healthyandhappy120301

I started out at 65-66kg in end Oct-early Nov and reached a plateau for 1 month at 60-61 in late Dec before reaching 59kg.

AnnPT77

I'm going to quote what I just wrote on another thread, because it's exactly what I'd suggest to you, too (but I'm too lazy to retype it ):

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.