Its tough!

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  • Flowers4Julia
    Flowers4Julia Posts: 521 Member
    I have a small ideal weight range that is where I'm happy and I tend to continue to eat at my TDEE minus 5% as a calorie goal. I did recently go on a week vacation and decided not to log or mentally count calories and just make good choices while enjoying a few treats along the way. I was up at the top of my range when I returned home and weighed. Within a week, I lost it. So, i figured it was water weight......That gave me confidence.
  • 55in13
    55in13 Posts: 1,091 Member
    If I 'take my eye off the ball' even for a couple of days the scales shoot up but try and loses a couple of pounds it takes forever.
    I wanted so badly to reduce body fat and I did, but that means my body can no longer support the rapid weight loss I did when I started losing. It hardly seems fair; I could go to fancy buffets on vacation and get thousands of extra calories per day but I can only have a deficit of a few hundred per day at most to get rid of it.
  • AnitraSoto
    AnitraSoto Posts: 725 Member
    I also find maintenance to be harder than losing, not so much physically, but mentally. When you are losing, you have goals that you meet that encourage you to push forward. In maintenance, you have to work just as hard, but there are no more "prizes"... I have had to create my own set of new goals, but now they are strength-related instead of scale-related.
  • She_Hulk
    She_Hulk Posts: 277
    I'm struggling with this, as well. I don't want to lose any more weight, BUT I am still trying to lose my last 2% or so of body fat and gain some lean muscle. That's kind of the next step, right? So... I haven't gained/lost weight while maintaining (which is great, believe me) but my bf is still the same also. I'm not sure how to go about it. Up my calories? Lower them? I really don't know. But what I'm doing is obviously not working.
  • 55in13
    55in13 Posts: 1,091 Member
    I'm struggling with this, as well. I don't want to lose any more weight, BUT I am still trying to lose my last 2% or so of body fat and gain some lean muscle. That's kind of the next step, right? So... I haven't gained/lost weight while maintaining (which is great, believe me) but my bf is still the same also. I'm not sure how to go about it. Up my calories? Lower them? I really don't know. But what I'm doing is obviously not working.
    I think the answer is both, unfortunately. To lower BF% and stay the same weight, you can't convert fat to muscle. I think you have to lose the fat and gain the muscle as two separate activities. There are long running threads over in Fitness about whether it is possible to gain muscle while eating at a deficit and the overwhelming opinion is that you can't. The worry I have about the bulk/cut cycle is eating over TDEE while working out for a few days and then finding out I didn't work out hard enough. Anyway, it may mean a month of gaining followed by a month of losing or visa versa.
  • She_Hulk
    She_Hulk Posts: 277
    I was afraid of that! LOL! Thanks for the info. I think you may be right though. It's just (like you said) a very slippery slope!
  • tomcornhole
    tomcornhole Posts: 1,084 Member
    I'm doing the gain muscle and lose fat thing right now. Since starting this three months ago, I have successfully maintained my weight while reducing BF% 1% to 2%. That equates to a LBM gain of around 3 lbs while losing 3 lbs of fat. I am happy with that.

    I could end the story there and declare victory, but that would be less than honest. It is a slow and very inefficient process. Very, very inefficient. And somewhat frustrating. I would like my strength to be progressing faster. I would like to be losing fat faster. Basically, I am doing neither very well. Jack of both trades, master of neither. I will continue this until Oct/Nov when I will start a traditional bulk/cut cycle which I think is a much better approach. I've never done a bulk, so that will be weird to control weight gain vs. weight loss.

    Good luck and keep us updated on your progress.

    Tom
  • theycallyoumister
    theycallyoumister Posts: 222 Member
    Yes! I'm not kidding when I say it is tougher than losing for me. I'm still trying to figure out why but I suspect it's due to several contributing factors. Time will tell... :)
  • JeanneTops
    JeanneTops Posts: 2,635 Member
    Maintenance is not only harder than losing, it's different.

    Maintenance is about a lot more than counting calories. It's about how you deal with what life is going to throw at you. Many, many people will tell you that they started gaining the weight back because of a life change - marriage, divorce, lose a job, start a new job, accidents, illness, injury, have a baby, death of a loved one, just plain get older. Add to that, if you lost a significant amount of weight, your metabolism has changed - you gain weight more easily and you lose weight more slowly.

    So maintenance is really about working on your mindspace. How do you react to stress? How well do you accommodate drastic and sudden change or slow and gradual change? What kind of person do you envision yourself as? Are you happy being who you are, do you feel your making progress towards becoming the person you want to be? If what was happening in your life ever affected how you ate, then it still will. You have to work on changing how life affects how you eat. And that's really hard.

    Jeanne
  • nxd10
    nxd10 Posts: 4,570 Member
    I found losing the weight easy. Maintaining . . . I'm still at a deficit although losing very, very slowly. I'm comfortable at these calories though and got a fitbit to help me know exactly where I am in terms of activity. I'm exercising a lot more and really like how that feels.
  • JessiesGirls520
    JessiesGirls520 Posts: 75
    I totally agree. I feel like it is a constant struggle! Intuitively eating clean foods and tracking my activity is helping some.
  • 55in13
    55in13 Posts: 1,091 Member
    I'm doing the gain muscle and lose fat thing right now. Since starting this three months ago, I have successfully maintained my weight while reducing BF% 1% to 2%. That equates to a LBM gain of around 3 lbs while losing 3 lbs of fat. I am happy with that.

    I could end the story there and declare victory, but that would be less than honest. It is a slow and very inefficient process. Very, very inefficient. And somewhat frustrating. I would like my strength to be progressing faster. I would like to be losing fat faster. Basically, I am doing neither very well. Jack of both trades, master of neither. I will continue this until Oct/Nov when I will start a traditional bulk/cut cycle which I think is a much better approach. I've never done a bulk, so that will be weird to control weight gain vs. weight loss.

    Good luck and keep us updated on your progress.

    Tom
    It is sort of semantics, but if you are breaking even on weight and losing fat, you are not building muscle at a deficit because there is no deficit. There is actually a tiny surplus that you are erasing when you do the strength training. So you are doing really short bulk/cut cycles IMO. I feel like I improved my strength and muscle tone while I was eating at a pretty large deficit. The gym rats tell me my muscles look bigger to me because I melted away fat around them and increased the glycogen stores so they are holding more water. poe-tay-toe, poe-tah-tah - they look a lot better. :smile:
  • itsok2beme
    itsok2beme Posts: 2 Member
    I have found maintaining especially in this day of COVID harder. Too easy to reach for a snack, to get lazier about tracking, portion size growing. Seems to take more vigilance for me than the weight loss did.
  • StargazerB
    StargazerB Posts: 425 Member
    edited September 2020
    I personally find maintainence to be difficult. My first year was pretty easy because I did a recomp and saw a lot of body changes. After that it really slowed and it felt like so much work to keep tracking my intake and not see results. I got lazy and now gained about 10 pounds over the last 1.5 years and now I need to lose it again.
  • Iwantahealthierme30
    Iwantahealthierme30 Posts: 293 Member
    I'm trying to lose and maintaining. It's frustrating.
  • LivingtheLeanDream
    LivingtheLeanDream Posts: 13,342 Member
    sijomial wrote: »
    I've always been contrary and it looks like I am on this subject too :smile:

    I find maintenance so much easier than losing. I love my food and those extra few hundred calories make such a difference in the choices I can make.

    Having lost weight successfully just gives me confidence that if it starts to creep up again I know exactly what to do to get back on track.

    agreed
  • LivingtheLeanDream
    LivingtheLeanDream Posts: 13,342 Member
    sijomial wrote: »
    LivingtheLeanDream wrote: »
    sijomial wrote: »
    I've always been contrary and it looks like I am on this subject too :smile:

    I find maintenance so much easier than losing. I love my food and those extra few hundred calories make such a difference in the choices I can make.

    Having lost weight successfully just gives me confidence that if it starts to creep up again I know exactly what to do to get back on track.

    agreed

    Wow - nice reminder of how long I've been on MFP!!

    7yrs on I'm still maintaining, still enjoying my food and exercise.
    Calorie allowance is far higher now though as I'm retired and both exercise volume and NEAT is much higher.

    Of course there's been a few blips along the way but I've not let them get out of hand and part of that is simply enjoying being the right weight.

    We're maintenance twins :smiley: wish I could say my calorie allowance was higher but don't have the privilege yet of being retired and having more time to be active... one day though hopefully :smile:
  • brenn24179
    brenn24179 Posts: 2,144 Member
    I am glad to see I am not the only one that has found maintenance difficult. I do think it is worth it but I have to log my calories every day and weigh every day. I have had my weight off since 2013 , 40 lbs but gained 25 of it back after 4 years and had to get that off. Yes life happened and I got a flu and then could eat again and ate everything in sight. So I have had the weight off for last couple of years but would still like to overeat but have to be disciplined to keep the weight off. Yes it takes effort but worth it.
  • tuckerrj
    tuckerrj Posts: 1,453 Member
    In maintenance I lack the 'joy' or satisfaction of seeing the scale number go down. I need to learn to find other goals to replace weight loss. Heavier bench press or leg press; a faster time in my 5k; or a new pursuit like biking or pickle ball, maybe...
  • MadisonMolly2017
    MadisonMolly2017 Posts: 11,152 Member
    tuckerrj wrote: »
    In maintenance I lack the 'joy' or satisfaction of seeing the scale number go down. I need to learn to find other goals to replace weight loss. Heavier bench press or leg press; a faster time in my 5k; or a new pursuit like biking or pickle ball, maybe...

    Yes, and great health, energy...

    Why did you lose the weight in the first place? I find revisiting that helps me!

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