I lost 25 lbs over 4 months and then found my maintenance calorie level by gradually increasing until I stopped losing. I've been maintaining for a month and a half at this level but now my weight is going down a bit again. I've been exercising at a pretty even pace the entire time, so no clear reason why it would go down.
I'm in my 40s so not working with sky high metabolism here, but does it usually pick up after the weight stabilizes for a while? I'm determined not to gain again, but would rather stay at goal weight and not below.
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Now, since you have less body, it has slowed some and that won't speed back up of course.
That's like the last thing slowed down when presented with a foolish level of undereating.
Above that is slowing down other things the body does, keeping warm, growing hair & nails, replacing skin and muscle, ect. You may not have noticed that depending on how reasonable your diet was.
First thing lost has probably started coming back - spontaneous movements, other willingness to move more.
That can keep increasing back to where it was.
Workouts may be getting better, so burning more, or causing more damage that needs more repair.
And it's good to push it higher unless you are just comfortable with level of eating and not going outside your weight goal range.
Yeah - make it a range, not a number, or you'll drive yourself nuts with water weight fluctuations.
2 lb x 3500 cal/lb fat / 28 days = 250 cal additional deficit daily.
So you would eat additional 250 cal daily on average.
Or whatever your math works out to for time range and weight lost.
Much longer term increased my maintenance calories significantly through raised activity levels and higher volume of exercise.
TBH in purely maths terms don't add a "few calories" when you are already well under goal weight, add what you compute to be your current deficit.
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