Maintenance transition

mel941980

Hi, All -

I started my weight loss journey in January, 2020. I have lost 95lbs and finally got into a normal BMI range. Three weeks ago I switched my weight loss goal from a pound a week to half a pound a week. Other than increasing my overall calorie intake, I have done everything the exact same, including my exercise routine, tracking all calories, wearing my Garmin Vivosmart, etc. Last week I dropped one pound and this week I dropped 1.8 pounds.

I weigh myself at the exact same time every week wearing the same thing, so I usually have a ballpark idea on what I will lose. This has totally thrown me off.

Any insight? I have 7lbs left to go, so it's not a problem, but I don't want my weight loss to continue at this rate.

Thanks!

mjglantz

I had something similar. when I got to 162 which was my goal I started upping the calories and also upped the exercise and continued to lose. since the weight loss was slow and still within the normal BMI I figured to just let me body tell me when to stop losing weight. Our the next 6 months I lost around 15 more lbs and then stabilized. It seemed to me that this is all a bit of balancing act between calories in v. calories out and all the other factors that influence weight.

wunderkindking

My experience has been similar and I've done a lot of 'eat at maintenance' breaks. My personal experience is that what the scale reflects is not what I did this day/week but roughly what I did last month. The scale/my loss reflects what I've been habitually doing for an extended period of time. Not what I have been doing for the last day/days or week.

That said, do the math over the PREVIOUS month (pre maintaining). Number of calories over those 30 days and that number is A. Take the amount of pounds you lost and multiply by 3500 - that number is b. Subtract b from a and get C (calories left after accounting for weight lost). Then divide that by 30. The number you get at all of that is the rough number of calories you need to maintain.

For me, personally, MFP is off by about 150 calories a day, on the 'too low' side of things..

AnnPT77

I think what others said above is sensible. I'd add this:

Some people seem to have daily life activity level (spontaneous movement, etc.) that's more sensitive to calorie intake. Eating a little more triggers moving a little more perhaps in subtle ways, with a certain range of calories. If you're one of those people, you may find that as you approach maintenance calories - even maintenance calories calculated from your own personal loss rate and logging, not just taken from a calculator at face value - you may find that your experience-based TDEE shifts up a little bit, so that your final maintenance is a little higher than what you'd predict from your weight loss rate at a particular deficit.

It doesn't seem to be a universal or predictable thing, but it doesn't seem to be super unusual, either.

I'm a person similar to @wunderkindking - my calorie needs are higher than MFP's estimates predict, so I need to eat more in maintenance than MFP would say to eat if I just set my profile to maintain. It varies by season, but I'm high sedentary to low lightly active, in terms of typical step counts, before intentional exercise. If I set MFP at *active* (which I'm not), it still predicts my maintenance calories a bit too low.

In maintenance, I eat to my own calorie estimates derived from weight loss rate and logging, which are 25-30% above what MFP would estimate at a technically correct activity level setting of sedentary to lightly active. This is unusual, but it can happen. (On top of that, I estimate exercise carefully, and eat all exercise.) I've been maintaining a healthy weight for over 5 years doing this. 🤷‍♀️

Estimate your maintenance calories from your logging/loss data, as @wunderkindking suggests. Move to that level to maintain, eventually, either in phases or all at once as you prefer. Even then, you *may* find you continue to lose slowly, perhaps after an interval of holding steady for a while, if you're someone whose energy level is sparked by the added calories. If that happens, do some gradual small adds until things level out. Don't be afraid: Even if you overshoot by 100 calories a day, it'll take more than a month to add a pound . . . and you know how to lose a pound if you want to: You've proven that.

Best wishes!

mel941980

Thank you so much! All of your advice is insightful. I utilized the calculation @wunderkindking provided and my daily calorie count on MFP is 250 lower, so I will increase my calorie intake.

cmriverside

I had the same experience as Ann.

I would add that the first year after I lost 75 pounds I had a lot of weight fluctuations - and I still fluctuate about five pounds on any given day, so don't put a whole lot of meaning on a few pounds either way. Most of us understand that Maintenance is a range. I am at 21-ish BMI year-round and have been at that weight for 13 years - but it is a five pound range for me. I don't take action unless I'm out of that range. I still weigh myself several times a week.