Maintenance - worried

Hwlf84

I’m small - 5’1. I’ve decided to move to maintenance at least for a while - I’m not at my original goal weight of 105 lm but I’m a healthy BMI now at 112 lb.
But I hadn’t realised quite how few calories I could have at maintenance - around 1400 according to MFP - for the rest of my life!
How do others manage it - do you effectively ‘diet’ several days a week and save up for treats? I know I can’t sustain never ever having them.
I do exercise but I know calories from that tend to be vv overestimated so ma reluctant to eat them.
Would welcome advice from those who have kept weight off for a long time!

staticsplit

Eat half of your exercise calories and see how that goes. That should give you a little more!

MikePTY

Hwlf84 wrote: »

I’m small - 5’1. I’ve decided to move to maintenance at least for a while - I’m not at my original goal weight of 105 lm but I’m a healthy BMI now at 112 lb.
But I hadn’t realised quite how few calories I could have at maintenance - around 1400 according to MFP - for the rest of my life!
How do others manage it - do you effectively ‘diet’ several days a week and save up for treats? I know I can’t sustain never ever having them.
I do exercise but I know calories from that tend to be vv overestimated so ma reluctant to eat them.
Would welcome advice from those who have kept weight off for a long time!

If you don't eat back your exercise calories, then you aren't really eating at maintenance. You can use a TDEE calculator like tdeecalculator.net to calculate a goal for you based off of your exercise level.

endermako

there is a big difference between eating back your calories or none at all. Try eating a portion of them back.

middlehaitch

I’m 5’1 and maintain between 100-105 lbs. I’m in my 10th year of maintenance.

Because I am older I was initially given 1200 cals for sedentary maintenance, plus I ate back 200 cals for an hours exercise.

I use to eat back 100% of the calories from MFP but by the time I had hit maintenance ( it took a year to lose 30lbs) I knew my personal data well enough that I could round it out to 200cals.

For the first while I followed NEAT and ate back 200 only on exercise days.
I then changed to TDEE and did 1400 cals every day.
That gave me extra energy so I burnt more cals during daily activity, and probably upped my exercise intensity a tad.

The more calories I burnt; more calories I got to eat.
Back to upping my cals in a NEAT method, extra on exercise days.
More energy, transferred to TDEE

This went on for a few years, now I estimate that I eat a TDEE of about 1700-1800 cals (don’t log anymore) mainly gardening, walking and bodyweight right now.

Once the yoga, lifting, and a couple of classes are picked up in the fall I am expecting another small bump in my cals.

It has been very interesting and slow calorie increase, but with a bit of forethought I could have planned it, and probably had it happen faster.

The increase in NEAT has been subtle, no all of a sudden walking the 3km to the grocery store then back, just getting up and doing something instead of putting it off. I’m still quite the sloth.

Sorry that was so long, hope it helps.

Cheers, h.

zeejane4

MikePTY wrote: »

Hwlf84 wrote: »

I’m small - 5’1. I’ve decided to move to maintenance at least for a while - I’m not at my original goal weight of 105 lm but I’m a healthy BMI now at 112 lb.
But I hadn’t realised quite how few calories I could have at maintenance - around 1400 according to MFP - for the rest of my life!
How do others manage it - do you effectively ‘diet’ several days a week and save up for treats? I know I can’t sustain never ever having them.
I do exercise but I know calories from that tend to be vv overestimated so ma reluctant to eat them.
Would welcome advice from those who have kept weight off for a long time!

If you don't eat back your exercise calories, then you aren't really eating at maintenance. You can use a TDEE calculator like tdeecalculator.net to calculate a goal for you based off of your exercise level.

This.

I recently figured my TDEE and it was quite a bit higher than where I had thought I was at. I've upped my calories and my weight hasn't fluctuated up at all

Evamutt

agree with all the above & I ate back 95-100% of exercise calories while losing. I'm 5'4 & I was able to add about 3-400 more calories on maintenance plus exercise so I was quite satisfied. How many calories are you eating now? Do look up your TDEE

Hwlf84

This is so helpful thank you everyone. I’m going to try eating back some of my exercise calories (and I have an Apple Watch so I’ll watch my movement ring too - I normally do about 600 calories a day on that though again I know they’re vv inaccurate). I guess I was so paranoid about getting it wrong and putting any weight back on I didn’t dare which was silly.

spiriteagle99

At 62, MFP says I should be eating 1400 calories to maintain my weight. I get a lot of exercise, fortunately. It allows me to eat a lot more than 1400. My exercise is mostly walking and running, which are easy to calculate. I actually burn a bit more than the calculations because I run hills and do some interval work. This gives me some leeway for errors and omissions in my logging.

Jthanmyfitnesspal

The philosophical question is: do you really need to eat more if you are not hungry? In principal, once your body gets used to it, you will not be hungry when you eat at maintenance (including eating back calories exercised off). It takes a while (months) for your body to acclimate to a new weight, so just keep on logging and weighing.

FarmerCarla

I've found maintaining with a keto WOE is easy, and I don't get hungry. I don't track food and exercise, but I weigh daily and eat extra carbs when my weight drops below my desired range.

csplatt

I have been given 1600 for maintenance and it took time to adjust because I really wanted to be able to eat more. I can go a week without logging and will see a pound or two sneak back on, which may just be food in my digestive track or bloating, but I will tighten up to see them come off again just to stay on track.