How did you settle on what your maintenance weight was going to be?

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gemiller87
gemiller87 Posts: 137 Member
edited January 2020 in Health and Weight Loss
So for 2019 my resolution was to lose weight and get healthier. I dropped 130+ lbs in 2019. My goal was originally 350+(unknown top number) to 265. I ended the year at 225 after continuing to just keep moving the goal post. Currently sitting right around 220 on a continued drop path. Mathematically and visually I fall around a 20-22% body fat range now. I just can't really settle on what an end result should be.

Right now i'm leaning towards continuing for 16-18% body fat which based on measurements and last years history of weight loss should be around 200-208ish if I maintain my current workout pattern and increased running as well. Weight loss did slow but it's still solidly 1-2lbs a week. Maybe slow down isn't the best description, but the swings weekly are a little more wild now. This would put me based on my current estimates safely stabilizing at maintenance/recomp in March sometime. I did recently re-assess calorie counts and thinned it out just a bit more, eating around 1800 a day right now and eating in for some exercise if hungry but not set in stone with that.

Just curious mostly if there's a more standard method of choosing what "baseline" is in the fitness and health world?
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  • gemiller87
    gemiller87 Posts: 137 Member
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    NovusDies wrote: »
    Why not recomp now and then decide if you need to lose more weight later? I feel like that is the only way I will decide on a number unless I hit a point that becomes more of a struggle than it is worth to fall below. I have lost even more weight than you and carrying it and losing it means I have a lot of other work to do in order to reach any type of satisfaction. By alternating between recomp and deficit I can try to get the two objectives closer to the same page. Then I can keep tweaking as needed.

    Maybe you are in a place where baselines are important. I am still trying to get into the ballpark of that discussion.

    I plan to start recomp next month and right now the plan is 4 months before I return to a deficit.

    I guess because in my head I've been working this long at it why stop short of the "goal line", but the problem is where is the goal line I guess? I would love to just finish to a fairly lean condition and then do a bulk/cut cycle but after this much drop I don't think I can stomach intentionally adding body fat back on when I could just go with a recomp/super lean bulk and let it take as long as it has to when I get to a reasonable "starting point" for that next phase. Thats kinda why I picked the top of the "athletic" and bottom of "average/healthy" body fat range to stop at, because I know even in the leanest of bulking and recomp cycles there will be some body fat gain. I'm not looking to be ripped, but after all this I'd like to at least keep a clean condition.

  • gemiller87
    gemiller87 Posts: 137 Member
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    Maxxitt wrote: »

    That particular goal, I think, is attainable when a person commits to a level of activity and calories-in that is sustainable over the long haul. Recomping is a way to that destination, in my mind, because it takes so darn long that it's possible to build habits and get used to looking at the long game rather than meeting short-term (and more motivating) goals. Putting the workouts into place now and keeping a deficit going for another 6 weeks to drop another 10 pounds (as long as you are on a roll that feels doable...if it didn't then I would support a more modest deficit), then eating at maintenance with a focus on nutrition that supports your workouts makes sense to me.

    Right now i'm running 3-4 days a week around 10-13 miles total. Today I will be trying for my first 10k run at <11min mile, my 3.5mile pace is 9:45mile. I'm doing a pretty consistent planking routine as well as various dumbbell work. I finally completed my first dead hang pull up after months of work on that.

    I actually have found I am enjoying my workout time the last few months, popping in headphones and clearing my head. It's a good mental "clearing" tool as well as physical progress. I go roller skating with my kids once every other week at least, and plan on having my mountain bike serviced and starting to get back into that as well. Getting down to a point where the physical activity can be fun and not a painful/agonizing process has made it all the more worthwhile to get where I have made it.

    As far as the calorie balance I should be fine, I recently moved from 2000 to 1800 (i'm 6'6") as 2000 was starting to see a lowered and less consistent drop rate. My work life bounces around a lot in activity level so 2000 was fine with the mass amounts of weight to burn but with some weeks being very active at work and others more desk based it wasn't as predictable anymore. My maintenance calorie count even at 200lbs would be 2500 even with no exercise, I'll have little to no problem maintaining that I don't think at this point. My big problem before was drinking away calories and dense foods, a year plus into this I find I enjoy my diet a lot more now than the old trash I was eating anyway. It's definitely a long road to get sorted out though!
  • emeraldeyes2020
    emeraldeyes2020 Posts: 231 Member
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    I’m just going off the bmi chart, going for the healthy weight area and then I’ll decide as I go where on that I’m happy with.

    My previous weight was unhealthily low and I’d like more muscle this time too
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,874 Member
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    I never had a number...a number is just a number. I knew I wanted to look a certain way in the mirror and that was it. 15%ish BF is where I maintain.
  • sardelsa
    sardelsa Posts: 9,812 Member
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    So far I haven't really settled long term. I would say either when I am at goal physique (at least for the time being) or I want to take break, or I want to recomp. It never really has anything to do with weight, although I do tend to stay in a certain range. Soon I am going to transition to maintenance (even though I am not where I want to be) in order to build a bit of muscle and lose a bit of fat, we will see how it goes.
  • gemiller87
    gemiller87 Posts: 137 Member
    edited January 2020
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    NovusDies wrote: »

    This part is troubling. You should not create your deficit based on sedentary calories. You will lose too fast and potentially cost yourself muscle mass in the process. You should not be losing more than 1 pound per week now. Your deficit at 1800 has to be at least 1200 calories per day which is closer to 2.5 pounds per week. You are eating quite a bit less than I am and I am shorter, older, and probably less active than you are.

    Thats pretty contradicting to the general consensus that you can't outrun the fork no? The goal is to base your deficit on your baseline lifestyle and eat back in for exercise around 1/2 of exercise calories seemed to be the general consensus from everything i've read. According to sail rabbit my maintenance is 2400-2500 at goal weight and 2500-2650 at current position depending on calc method, so the deficit is around 700 calories daily, not 1200.

    I almost have to base my calorie count on my sedentary desk weeks. They outnumber the active travel weeks. Early on with the larger amount of weight it was easier to just absorb sedentary times into the overall grand scheme of things, but now it's not so easy.

    And yes, I'm aware everyone says 1lb is the "goal loss number". I'm simply being real/honest with what i'm doing, not saying it's what everyone should be doing. That said, i'm still seeing strength number gains, but yes, I'm also aware they could be MUCH MUCH better at a higher intake. Also, that said, yes I have some lost muscle mass as well in this with no denial, visually it's apparent on my shoulder area but not really anywhere else. However, before I couldn't do a single pushup, and now I can do 20 straight without an issue for example. It's a strange balance. I'm definitely probably more active than most on the recreational side of it, but it's not predictable like someone with a physical working job.

  • hesn92
    hesn92 Posts: 5,967 Member
    edited January 2020
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    I like to set goals and I like to check those goals off. When setting a goal weight I am pretty liberal I guess. I *think* I would like to ultimately be X lbs (I have been that weight in past and was happy with it) but my goal is actually 10 lbs above that because that is a perfectly acceptable weight for me as well. When I get there I will decide what I want to do from that point, if I want to keep losing, or if I want to stay there.

    I could get down to a weight that I end up being happy with, that is a little higher than my ultimate goal. I would hate to not get to check mark that goal as being complete, because I didn't hit some arbitrary number.
  • AlexandraFindsHerself1971
    AlexandraFindsHerself1971 Posts: 3,106 Member
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    I set my goal weight by a certain amount of trial and error. I'm a tall, well-built woman even with the fat, and having asked a few tall, well-built women their weights, I decided 180 was a good goal. It is also about an even hundred pounds away. Now, I'm aware that the BMI chart still says this is overweight. Top of the normal weight chart for me is 150. Okay. I don't want to diet all of my curves off, or lose muscle. But it's hard to see from here where that will be.

    My actual goal here is to get surgery on my belly. Three large babies did a number on my abs, and I already have sagging skin here. From all I can tell, the guidelines want me to more or less normalize my weight and hold there for a while to prove that's where I'm at. So what I'm going to do is lose to 180, pause, look at myself hard and see if, apart from the belly area (that's gonna be a mess til surgery) I look the way I want to. If the answer is "not quite", I'll lose a few more pounds and look again. And so on. When I get the look in back and thighs and arms I want, I'll start maintenance and a six-month countdown to surgery.
  • girlwithcurls2
    girlwithcurls2 Posts: 2,262 Member
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    NovusDies wrote: »
    I do not worry about goal lines. I set a directional heading and then make my goal the process. I am concerned with mindset adjustments and building better habits and then allow more specific goals to show up as they will.

    I am not saying that is the right or wrong approach for you. I realized some time ago that I wasn't just trying to lose weight I was trying to lose the mindset and the habits of the person who gained it. The same is true for fitness. My goal is not to lose my flabby body but the mindset and habits of the person who let it get that way.

    ^ This should be bolded and stuck permanently on p.1. You just put into words what the last 5 years of my life have been. Embedded in this is the feeling of "failure" and subsequent giving up when something, anything, goes awry. New me doesn't see it that way. I have so many better habits these days, but I also know that in order to keep them as habits, I have to continue to practice them.
  • slbbw
    slbbw Posts: 329 Member
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    You are clearly looking for a goal post and folks here are telling you to look at the process. It is possible that your daily activity level is decreasing because you are eating too little. At 215 you would be at a healthy BMI. I would say aim there and the work in a reverse diet to where you are no longer losing. Given your current trajectory you might over shoot and land at 210 or so which should be a reasonable spot for a recomp. Especially since you have said you are noticing muscle loss. Overall good job on the progress so far. Now its time to focus on health and fitness and less on weight loss.
  • gemiller87
    gemiller87 Posts: 137 Member
    edited January 2020
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    slbbw wrote: »
    You are clearly looking for a goal post and folks here are telling you to look at the process. It is possible that your daily activity level is decreasing because you are eating too little. At 215 you would be at a healthy BMI. I would say aim there and the work in a reverse diet to where you are no longer losing. Given your current trajectory you might over shoot and land at 210 or so which should be a reasonable spot for a recomp. Especially since you have said you are noticing muscle loss. Overall good job on the progress so far. Now its time to focus on health and fitness and less on weight loss.

    It's funny everyone is still making guesses without really knowing. Technically no, 220/221 at 6'6" is still just outside normal if you are basing purely on BMI. It's 25.42 which is still in the overweight category. Also, noticing muscle loss visually, not data wise, so it's actually possible it's just i'm not used to seeing myself this lean as I don't recall the last time I was under 250 in general (as 250 was high school weight kind of thing). This is also why I shifted to primarily using body fat calculations based on measurements and visual comparison, because I don't think BMI is particular accurate for me. I do feel that i'm in the middle/above middle of the "average/healthy" category but not into the athletic side of things.

    Data wise performance is increasing, mile times are dropping (from a first run restart around 12min mile down to 9:20 for 2.5miles and 10:04mile average low for a 5 mile run), bench press and dumbbell reps are increasing (although admittedly max's are stagnant and I haven't been pushing on it), planking duration increasing weekly, push ups sustainable, etc. All stuff that last year was a complete failure for a baseline.

    Also, every calculator for long term weight loss i've seen shows a multiple pound rebound during the adjustment process to maintenance, so if I would simply stop here I would rebound a few lb increase and then definitely still be in the overweight category based on BMI before I even started a recomp/lean bulk.

    The question really wasn't "what do you think of where i'm at", it was how did you decide on YOUR maintenance weight. I'm not really looking for advice on what i'm doing, just seeing and comparing how everyone else settled onto where they wanted to maintain and why and how I can implement other peoples methods for this decision into my own.



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