Reached target weight

ms4352987

I've finally reached my target weight of 62kg (about 137lb) having lost 16kg (35lb)!
I've gone from a UK size 16 to size 8
I am super excited but also a bit nervous about adjusting my diet to maintain rather than lose weight, as I don't want to put all the weight back on again.
Does anyone have any tips or words of wisdom?

brown6267

Congratulations on your loss.

I weigh 134 and have been in maintenance since 04/2020. I have changed nothing except adding around 200-300 calories per day to my diet. I exercise the same and still log food.

Congratulations again!!

mariomicro

I reached my target weight long time ago, but I still maintain a mild calorie deficit (100 cals) just to enjoy the overall benefits of calorie restriction. I will probably start eating at a surplus if I get to 18/18.5 BMI.

spiriteagle99

Congratulations. It may take a while to figure out your actual maintenance calories. I continued to lose weight for a while after I reached my goal, and ended up adding calories to my daily goal when the mfp number was too low. My goal calories are still too low, but that allows me to be looser in my logging without gaining weight.

Maintenance isn't a lot different from losing weight; you just get a few more calories. Continue to exercise. Continue to watch what you eat. Continue to log.

LivingtheLeanDream

Congratulations
maintaining our weight is no different from when we were aiming to lose, we just get some extra calories to work with.
So if you were losing 1/2lb a week, you know you can now eat an extra 250cals a day - in other words an extra snack, or increase the size of your meals a little.

All the best with keeping the weight off, it can be done, loads of us here are long term maintainers, but it takes as much effort to maintain as it did when losing.

cmriverside

That first year is about trial and error. Good news is you probably have some idea of how many calories you need.

It would take quite a bit of denial for you to gain back 35 pounds without noticing. My 12 year maintenance does require me to pay some attention to the scale. I have my five pound range and I adjust if I hit the high or low number.

durhammfp

mariomicro wrote: »

I reached my target weight long time ago, but I still maintain a mild calorie deficit (100 cals) just to enjoy the overall benefits of calorie restriction. I will probably start eating at a surplus if I get to 18/18.5 BMI.

What are the benefits of calorie restriction if you are already at your target weight? Genuinely interested. I was looking at calorie restriction just as something to get me to my target weight.

mariomicro

durhammfp wrote: »

mariomicro wrote: »

I reached my target weight long time ago, but I still maintain a mild calorie deficit (100 cals) just to enjoy the overall benefits of calorie restriction. I will probably start eating at a surplus if I get to 18/18.5 BMI.

What are the benefits of calorie restriction if you are already at your target weight? Genuinely interested. I was looking at calorie restriction just as something to get me to my target weight.

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=calorie+restriction+longevity&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart

thebiblewithtina

ms4352987 wrote: »

I've finally reached my target weight of 62kg (about 137lb) having lost 16kg (35lb)!
I've gone from a UK size 16 to size 8
I am super excited but also a bit nervous about adjusting my diet to maintain rather than lose weight, as I don't want to put all the weight back on again.
Does anyone have any tips or words of wisdom?

Congratulations. I'll be following this thread closely. I'm currently 63Kg and goal weight is 61Kg.

B_Plus_Effort

congratulations, keep in mind your scale weight is only one of many health factors, find a dip tank or some other reliable way of measuring your body fat level and see where you fit, I don't want to rain on your parade but some people are "skinny fat" meaning they weigh the right amounts but carry too much fat, so then you can eat and exercise accordingly to bring that in line and that will be yet another aspect of your health and fitness

briscogun

Congrats on the loss first of all!

As far as maintenance, it's definitely more of a mental and emotional shift, at least it was for me. It's hard to go from wanting to see the scale go down to watching it bounce around up and down a few pounds here or there.

For example, I've yo-yo'd a few times over the last 10 years, so this time i approached maintenance differently (I'm great at losing, bad at maintaining). As I got closer to goal weight I started to put the breaks on and slowly ate more, just like a few hundred calories here or there. So my weight chart graph started to flatten out a bit. As I did I was tracking and logging so I had lots of data to see where my true maintenance was going to be calorie wise.

So after about a month of slowly adjusting I was in full on maintenance mode! Yay! And now my weight chart looks like a seismograph during an earthquake! Its up, its down, it all over the place! I wish I could post a pic here but it won't let me cut and paste it. So I've really started to rely on my weight trending app and looking at my weekly AVERAGE weight. I have a -5 lb/+5 lb range that I've been able to stick to for about 6 months now (except for a 10 day vacation where I went over 2 lbs).

So I guess in short, your weight will NOT be a static thing, even if you eat the EXACT same calories every day. Some days you'll just go up a lb or two for no reason, sometimes down a lb or two. You just kind of have to get used to these daily fluctuations and just realize your going to be bouncing around and that the normal part of it all. But this is what you worked so hard for so take a few months to adjust to the new you and the new way of eating (more food now yay!).

Bluetail6

Congratulations on reaching your goal weight!! I think with regular MFP check ins, you will be fine

Katerr1kk

Congratulations!