Finding maintenance calories!

crayonbreakywillow

Love this new forum!

I just started maintenance a couple weeks ago, and have gradually upped myself to 1650, which is the MFP calorie setting for sedentary. I'm not actually sedentary, but I'm not super active either. I typically walk 8-10 miles/per week. I was wondering what everyone's experience has been so far with setting maintenance calories. Do you find the MFP settings to be accurate? Have you set yourself to sedentary, lightly active, etc? Did you continue to lose on maintenance, or did you gain when you started?

I'm hoping that I'm able to up my calories to whatever they would be for lightly active. I'm just so apprehensive and afraid I will gain!

ZanaZana2012

Those are good questions!

I don't have answers, but will likely change my settings to maintenance next week and have been wondering the same things. Looking forward to hearing what feedback you get.

lporter229

I found my maintenance calories through trial and error. It takes a little time actually. I think it is normal to continue to drop weight even after you hit your goal because it's hard to get in the mind set of eating more. The fear of gaining weight is pretty normal. But if you keep a tight watch on it, it won't be a problem. Most people don't gain huge amounts of weight by eating slightly over their TDEE. They gain weight when they quit paying attention to how much they eat altogether. I suggest upping your calories in monthly increments until you find the place where your weight stabilizes.

zytah

i know most of the calculators online will tell you the calories needed to lose weight and the calories needed to maintain. i would start there when i get to maintenance.

http://scoobysworkshop.com/accurate-calorie-calculator/

foleyshirley

Love this new forum!

I just started maintenance a couple weeks ago, and have gradually upped myself to 1650, which is the MFP calorie setting for sedentary. I'm not actually sedentary, but I'm not super active either. I typically walk 8-10 miles/per week. I was wondering what everyone's experience has been so far with setting maintenance calories. Do you find the MFP settings to be accurate? Have you set yourself to sedentary, lightly active, etc? Did you continue to lose on maintenance, or did you gain when you started?

I'm hoping that I'm able to up my calories to whatever they would be for lightly active. I'm just so apprehensive and afraid I will gain!

You are probably going to be able to eat more than this, but this is a good place to start slowly. Try this for a couple of weeks. If you continue to lose, and you probably will, increase by 100-200 calories and try again. Any number you get will be an estimate, so a lot is trial and error. Once you find your maintenance number, remember to re-evaluate if your activity level changes.

wild_wild_life

I found my maintenance calories through trial and error. It takes a little time actually. I think it is normal to continue to drop weight even after you hit your goal because it's hard to get in the mind set of eating more. The fear of gaining weight is pretty normal. But if you keep a tight watch on it, it won't be a problem. Most people don't gain huge amounts of weight by eating slightly over their TDEE. They gain weight when they quit paying attention to how much they eat altogether. I suggest upping your calories in monthly increments until you find the place where your weight stabilizes.

Agreed. Upping your calories slowly is the only way to do it, as any online calculator, including MFP's, is just an estimate. I think I lost about 5 more pounds while I was trying to find maintenance.

You may also be able to calculate your maintenance based on your rate of loss. For instance, if you have been eating 1500 cals and losing 1 lb a week, then you know you have been at a 500 cal deficit so your maintenance is 2000. It doesn't always work out this easily, but it should!

ETA: 1650 is pretty low for maintenance unless you are a very small, sedentary person! Hopefully you will find you can eat more than that and still maintain.

crayonbreakywillow

I found my maintenance calories through trial and error. It takes a little time actually. I think it is normal to continue to drop weight even after you hit your goal because it's hard to get in the mind set of eating more. The fear of gaining weight is pretty normal. But if you keep a tight watch on it, it won't be a problem. Most people don't gain huge amounts of weight by eating slightly over their TDEE. They gain weight when they quit paying attention to how much they eat altogether. I suggest upping your calories in monthly increments until you find the place where your weight stabilizes.

Agreed. Upping your calories slowly is the only way to do it, as any online calculator, including MFP's, is just an estimate. I think I lost about 5 more pounds while I was trying to find maintenance.

You may also be able to calculate your maintenance based on your rate of loss. For instance, if you have been eating 1500 cals and losing 1 lb a week, then you know you have been at a 500 cal deficit so your maintenance is 2000. It doesn't always work out this easily, but it should!

ETA: 1650 is pretty low for maintenance unless you are a very small, sedentary person! Hopefully you will find you can eat more than that and still maintain.

Thanks all for the feedback! I figured it will take a while to find the right balance. For reference, I'm 5'6 and sitting at 136lbs right now, so I wouldn't consider myself a very small person. I hope you all are right about 1650 being low! It would be fun to eat more! ;-)

Yeller_Sensation

I stopped using MFP's calculators from my very first day of maintenance a year ago. I got my numbers from Scooby's Workshop (http://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/) and stayed with those numbers for half a year. Because I was no longer using MFP's calculators, I also stopped logging my exercise calories.

Sometime in early Feb I realized I was getting hungry more often, which was new to me. I did some research and stumbled upon this thread:

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/819055-setting-your-calorie-and-macro-targets

I used the calculator and crunched out the numbers. And my mind was blown. I discovered I had been under-eating by several hundred calories at least.

So far I have been feeling really good from eating between 1800 and 2000 calories a day.

purplepiggy1

I use my TDDE, which means I dont log my exercize unless its very unusually execssive

Seems to be pretty good, really about trial and error, if you lose then up and and if you gain then reduce the cals a bit

Good job and good luck in the future!

PippiNe

Bumping for quick reference later - I'm 6 pounds to goal and have the same questions! Thanks for posting!

sijomial

Agreed. Upping your calories slowly is the only way to do it, as any online calculator, including MFP's, is just an estimate. I think I lost about 5 more pounds while I was trying to find maintenance.

You may also be able to calculate your maintenance based on your rate of loss. For instance, if you have been eating 1500 cals and losing 1 lb a week, then you know you have been at a 500 cal deficit so your maintenance is 2000. It doesn't always work out this easily, but it should!

ETA: 1650 is pretty low for maintenance unless you are a very small, sedentary person! Hopefully you will find you can eat more than that and still maintain.

^^^ Good advice. Estimates/calculators are start points, trial & error is fine tuning.

phoenixgirl81

I'm going to maintenance calories soon too. I am planning on doing what I've done through my entire weight-loss process...set my calories at sedentary and log ALL my exercise (then eat my exercise cals back). I've trusted MFP all the way throughout the last 18 months, so I think it's a great place to start.

And then, as others have said, play around with upping or lowering cals as your body responds.

Congratulations on getting to your goal weight!!

jazzcat55

I think that MFP's maintenance calories are too low, at least for me. Once I hit my goal over a month ago and switched to maintenance, I kept losing slowly on MFP's recommended calories. I've even started getting a few "You're getting too skinny" comments from people. I'm scared of gaining weight, but obviously can't keep losing forever!

MFP gave me about 1700 for maintenance (53, 5'4" 122). I've upped that to 1850-1900 and seem to be holding steady. But if I enter that number in the MFP calculator, it tells me I will gain weight. I HATE that...so I just don't look at that. I also stop hitting the "Finished for today" button that tells you what you'll weigh in 5 weeks if every day were like today. It's too easy to get fixated on that feature even though it's inaccurate (for me, anyway).

I'm happy to be able to eat a few hundred calories more per day now that I've made my goal. It feels like such a luxury!

phyllisgehrke

I just started Maintenance about 2 days ago.

I found a thread to calculate your bmr and TDEE for your calories.
I am also sedentary.

I walk about 30 mins a day for 7 days a week.

I went to Fitness Frog and there are calculators for your BMR and TDEE.
Then when I got my calorie goal, I minus 200 pounds.
I have 1343 calories to maintain my weight being sedentary.

Hope this helps.

SurfyFriend

I'm 5'7, 21 female
I was losing 1lb per week on 1200 calories a day.
Now I am at the lowest point on the "healthy" spectrum (118lb) I can't eat that little anymore without feeling a starving sensation.
I've been maintaining at 1800-2100per day for the past 6months.
You have to eat a lot, especially if you're active.

themommie

Good advice, just up cals slowly and cut back a little if you start gaining, it seems if I eat more then 1400 cals I gain...grrrr oh well it is what it is

MoreBean13

I have a desk job and mine lines up with the very active setting, and I eat my exercise cals back.

Been maintaining since April with no weight change. I didn't have very much transition to maintenance b/c I tapered my loss for a few months at the end.

5'3" 2100 cals to maintain.

55in13

One of my big issues is exercise variance. I am looking at my running log in another tab. In the last 9 weeks, I had 2 weeks where I ran 30 or more miles, 2 weeks where I ran slightly under 10 miles and the other 5 are all between 20 and 25. The lowest was 9 and the highest 35. At 125 calories per mile, that's a difference of nearly 500 calories a day between my most active and least active weeks.

highervibes

Why don't you use your figure for weight loss? If you lost 1lb/week then add back 500 calories/day. If you lost 1/2lbs/week then 250? I would assume that if you're at maintenance you should pretty much know what you have been cutting this whole time?

Flowers4Julia

I use the heybales spreadsheet.......I eat my TDEE minus 5% on the average, been maintaining since April this way ????

Look into the "in place of a roadmap" group for the spreadsheet and info pertaining to it.

Oishii

Mfp's maintenance calories are quite a harsh cut for me. Having lost way faster than mfp predicted, I stupidly tried mfp's maintenance calories. I lost rapidly on 1750+ exercise, so bumped up through the activity levels until I was still losing on the highest level plus exercise. Then I started adding more and more calories and finally settled on 2450kcal + exercise. I thought of the 2450kcal as a ceiling, not a goal, so didn't necessarily make it each day, but I did get to a point where I could maintain.

How slowly you want to add calories is up to you. I, personally, had to add back pretty fast, as my goal weight was really the minimum I'm happy to weigh. If you want some perspective, I'm in my 30s but my parents were threatening to force feed me, and I weighed less than I had at 15 years old, despite now having a mummy tummy. If I need to lose again (I'm pregnant right now), I'll stop short of my goal weight intentionally, to allow for readjustment.