Maintenance

Olddfashionedd

I'm 21 years old, 4'11, Female and weigh about 116. I had lost over ten pounds since the beginning of the year. (its not much for most, but for a small body like me, it made a difference!) I'm not as active, I do atleast 30 minutes of of moderate to vigorous exercise a day, depending on how I'm feeling. But I'm home most of the day since I'm taking my college courses at home.
MFP gave me a goal for losing at 1200, and I was. Now, it's goal is 1500 for maintenance? How accurate is that for me?

thanos5

i would post mildred but i do not know if she is copyrighted.

i also do not know if you are male or female so i'm gonna guess female.

if your goal was losing .5lbs/week, your deficit was set at 250 cals/day.

so for maintenance, 250 plus 1200 is 1450, which is close enough to the 1500 calories for maintenance, by my math.

cmriverside

Only way to know is to try it. What thanos5 said is true, but if you only lost 10 pounds it may be off. Try it and log food and see. That's what we all have to do.

csplatt

My maintenance is 1600 because of my desk job. Annoying but oh well. I will try to push a little higher at some point if the scale moves down more.

gallicinvasion

Look at your rate of loss over the past 4 or 6 weeks. Were you losing about .5 lb a week, as expected, when you were eating 1200 average daily calories? If so, then 1450 is maintenance for you (arrived at this number by taking your daily average calories plus your daily average deficit of 250). If you were losing slower than .5 lbs a week, you were probably at a smaller deficit than 250, so try to eat 1300 average daily calories and see how it goes. But if you were losing faster than .5 lbs a week, then you had a larger deficit, so you’d have to add more to get to maintenance.

Either way, pick a good guesstimate, try it for a month, and if your weight trend is still going down over that time, add 100 daily calories and try another month. If your weight trend was going up, subtract 100 daily calories and try another month.

Calculators can only take you so far. Your own data will help you find your actual maintenance number.

LivingtheLeanDream

Try that number for a month and adjust intake as necessary.