Eating at Goal Weight Maintenance to lose?

amyniceneasy

A couple of years ago I was listening to podcasts on fat2fit radio. The thought process of their method was to figure out what your maintenance calories would ultimately be at your desired goal weight and to set your calorie intake to be that. Thinking that if you eat like you would need to eat to maintain your goal weight, you'd lose weight until you got to that weight and then maintain once you got there eating the same amount. Has anyone here used that method and have you been sucessful?

jillstreett

I would do it for about every 10 pounds. So when I started my journey at 195 and had established my workout routine, I did two things: Calculated my maintenance at 185, then subtracted 500 a day for a 1 pound loss each week, AND did the math for my TDEE at a lower multiplier than I was actually doing. For me, the 185 represented a short term goal and got me used to eating less and the TDEE multiplier being set to lightly active instead of moderately active left me room for error. Room for drinks with friends or room for pizza occasionally without guilt. When I got down into the 180's I would recalculate it at 175lbs and so on. I see how doing it by eating at maintenance for goal weight would work, but make sure you leave room for error so you don't feel deprived or like it's a strict hard and fast number you can't ever go over.

I am 4 pounds from goal (145) and my TDEE will be about 2050. If I had gone by goal maintenance - 500 calories it would be 2050-500=1550 and that actually is about what I ate per day if I were to average out the past 10 months...long story short, I personally could have done what you said, but I liked that I didn't feel like 1550 was the end all be all number.

TavistockToad

amyniceneasy wrote: »

A couple of years ago I was listening to podcasts on fat2fit radio. The thought process of their method was to figure out what your maintenance calories would ultimately be at your desired goal weight and to set your calorie intake to be that. Thinking that if you eat like you would need to eat to maintain your goal weight, you'd lose weight until you got to that weight and then maintain once you got there eating the same amount. Has anyone here used that method and have you been sucessful?

it works if you have a lot of weight to lose.

jjpptt2

The math works, but progress can be discouragingly slow depending on how much/little you have to lose.

Spliner1969

amyniceneasy wrote: »

A couple of years ago I was listening to podcasts on fat2fit radio. The thought process of their method was to figure out what your maintenance calories would ultimately be at your desired goal weight and to set your calorie intake to be that. Thinking that if you eat like you would need to eat to maintain your goal weight, you'd lose weight until you got to that weight and then maintain once you got there eating the same amount. Has anyone here used that method and have you been sucessful?

You can certainly do that. A deficit is a deficit. However, as you get closer to your goal weight the loss rate will slow considerably (it always does), but if you're right at maintenance calories for that goal then it's going to slow quicker. Your body also has the uncanny ability to adjust to calorie intakes which is why people will simply re-adjust their loss rate based on a set calculation every 5-10 lbs lost.

AnnPT77

I tried it. I was fine for a while, but after a while I got too impatient - my then-current maintenance calories for a still-overweight body were getting close to my goal-weight maintenance calories - probably within the rather substantial error possibility for even very meticulous logging - and it was just too slow for me. I broke down and cut further to just Get. There.

If you have a stronger character than I had, I'm sure it will work. :flowerforyou:

middlehaitch

My experience was unplanned.

My deficit calories 1200, was the same as my sedentary maintenance cals, as per MFP, at a 30lbs loss. (Short, light, and older)

It works, as others have said, but it gets very very slow.

I used the NEAT (MFP) method and ate back exercise cals. Towards the end I made purposeful, maintainable changes to my NEAT, and cut ~50 cals off my hourly exercise burn.

Try it, if you find it isn't working st any time, revisit your calorie intake and goals.

Cheers, h.

PAV8888

Echo what others have said, especially if you have a LOT to lose.

There are of course several elements into this. Activity level and deliberate exercise play into all this. But then again your ability to do more increases as you lose weight even though when you do more you now burn fewer calories for doing it. Still: you don't mind--at least I don't!

I think it is most excellent training to start teaching you approximate meal combinations that can constitute "normal" long term eating for you. In my particular case that 'normal' eating couldnot be two or three restaurant sized meals a day.... nor could it be subway salads and a bag of carrots!

I lost about 72.5lbs eating ~2560 Cal (1 year), lost another 11.1 lbs eating ~2913 (1 year) and, having decreased activity a tiny bit, kept relatively stable at ~2949 (-1.7lbs) and ~2873 (-1.5lbs) over the next two years. I am currently "normal weight" with about 10lbs of headroom in case @middlehaitch sends me on an AYCE cruise

My original "idea" was to learn to be happy with ~2500 Cal (cause easy nutritional label number for a male); which as you can see I both failed and didn't really fail at doing

middlehaitch

@PAV8888, leaving from Vancouver on Oct 13. AYCE. Unfortunately, not all you can drink- I will have to cut down on my late night fru-fru drink.
It will be 3 in the bed so you can't gain the 10lbs.

Cheers, h.