Maintainence calories?

FL_Hiker

Hi there,
I'm close to my goal and will be going into maintance soon! I'm curious what my calories per day would be. I'll be 120 lbs 5'4 female in my 20's , my active exercise schedule is every MWF: run 2 miles, and T TH run 4 miles. I'm hoping to up my mileage in the future but that's where I'm at right now.
Thanks!

kimny72

Have you been using your MFP calorie goal? If so, then if you switch your goal to Maintenance, it will tell you.

Having said that, just like with finding the right level to get enough of a deficit, trial and error is the only way to know for sure. You start raising your calories slowly, until you get to what you would think is your maintenance calories (so if you were losing 0.5lbs per week, you were in a 250 deficit, so raise your calories until you are eating those extra 250 cals) then wait 6-8 weeks and see what happens.

If you are already logging and tracking, using the personal data you already have will get you a much better idea than any calculator or someone else's experience can give you. :drinker:

sijomial

Work it out from any or all of these options:

• Your recent rate of weight loss - 1lb a week would indicate you are in an approximate 500/day deficit.
• Change your goal to "maintain current" weight and you will get an estimated non exercise day maintenance amount.
• Use a TDEE estimator if you prefer to average out your exercise.
• My favourite estimate is add up all your calories eaten in last 4 weeks, add 3500 for each pound lost, divide by 28.

Comparisons with other people are pretty worthless, there huge variations in logging accuracy, activity and exercise.

AnnPT77

For a wordier discussion ( ) of some of these options:

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10638211/how-to-find-your-maintenance-calorie-level

WilmaValley

Great info here, thanks!

lorrpb

Put your maintenance stats into MFP and see what it gives you. Make the same adjustments for exercise as you do now. That gives you a starting point.

Another approach is to look at your current loss rate and adjust by 500 for each lb. For example, if you're losing .5 per week, then add 250 calories to your current goal to maintain. By the time I reached maintenance, I was losing so slowly (less than .5 per week) there really was no adjustment to be made. I just kind of merged into maintenance.
Anxiety seems to be greater with people who are losing too fast at the end (1-2 lbs per week).