What maintenance weight do you eat at?

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merekins
merekins Posts: 228 Member
edited December 2024 in Health and Weight Loss
Eating at goal maintenance weight would still be deficit. When you eat at maintenance, are you using current weight or your goal weight?

Replies

  • zeejane03
    zeejane03 Posts: 993 Member
    edited March 2019
    I'm in maintenance, so I eat at maintenance calorie intake :)
  • mph323
    mph323 Posts: 3,563 Member
    Depends on what your goal is. If you are trying to lose weight, you would eat for your goal weight to create a deficit. If you are trying to maintain your current weight, eat at maintenance for what your weigt now.
  • kimny72
    kimny72 Posts: 16,011 Member
    merekins wrote: »
    Eating at goal maintenance weight would still be deficit. When you eat at maintenance, are you using current weight or your goal weight?

    I'm confused, and maybe I'm misunderstanding. But if you are trying to maintain your current weight, then your maintenance calories are the calories required to maintain your current weight.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 15,403 Member
    edited March 2019
    To not create a deficit you would maintain your current weight by eating at the correct maintenance level for that weight.

    Eating at the maintenance level for a different weight would create a caloric deficit or surplus and push your body towards changing its long-term weight level.

    Please note that all these numbers are estimates. And that they're further impacted by inadvertent errors in food loging that even the most careful among us make!

    So these estimates are a starting point only.

    You then have to determine how many of your exercise calories you can add on top.

    and then you observe your weight trend over time against your total and net calories eaten to decide whether you need to be changing your eating targets or not...
  • Maxxitt
    Maxxitt Posts: 1,281 Member
    The recommendation to take a diet break and "eat at maintenance" refers to eating so that you neither gain or lose weight at your current level. The recommendation to "eat at your goal weight maintenance" is a strategy for creating a deficit to lose weight. Hope this helps.
  • merekins
    merekins Posts: 228 Member
    Maxxitt wrote: »
    The recommendation to take a diet break and "eat at maintenance" refers to eating so that you neither gain or lose weight at your current level. The recommendation to "eat at your goal weight maintenance" is a strategy for creating a deficit to lose weight. Hope this helps.

    That was my question. My current calories are below what my goal weight maintenance supposedly is. When I did a maintenance week to take a break, I was using my goal maintenance so was just in a less dramatic deficit. I hadn’t thought about it until today but a true break would have been based on current weight. Thank you for clarifying.
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