Maintenance over Christmas

Walkywalkerson

I've been attempting to maintain over the last 2 months as I got Covid and just felt so poorly I couldn't think about what I was eating.
I just ate what I could stomach and counted the calories.
It turned out I was eating approximately maintenance calories so I have been trying to stick to that.
I'm recovered now - but its that time of year where there are more meals out and drinks etc ... so I've decided to carry on with maintenance calories until the New Year.
I lost around 4lbs with the virus - but have regained that in the last month which is pretty worrying as I'm supposed to be maintaining 😬
I don't want to get to January and be 10lbs heavier 😱
I'm still not at my goal yet and would like to lose another 15/ 20lbs
Does anyone have any advice on whether I should vary my calories maybe?
And allow for the higher calorie days with a deficit on others.
I'm finding eating at a deficit difficult at the moment.

cmriverside

This is a very personal decision. Eating at a deficit during the week and then Maintenance one or two days is a perfectly valid strategy.

If you want to lose, obviously you'll need to come up with a strategy to eat less. That's the only way. It doesn't have to be a lot less, just cut back 200-300 calories per day. There are lots of ways to do that.

The holidays and winter in general are more difficult for a lot of people and if you're recovering from illness even more so.

Walkywalkerson

cmriverside wrote: »

This is a very personal decision. Eating at a deficit during the week and then Maintenance one or two days is a perfectly valid strategy.

If you want to lose, obviously you'll need to come up with a strategy to eat less. That's the only way. It doesn't have to be a lot less, just cut back 200-300 calories per day. There are lots of ways to do that.

The holidays and winter in general are more difficult for a lot of people and if you're recovering from illness even more so.

Yes maybe you're right- I think trying to eat at a 200/300 cal deficit midweek and maintenance calories on days where I'm out or weekends might be better.
I think I might try no eating back exercise calories for a week or two.
I've been pretty sedentary recently- so maybe that's the problem.
Thanks 😊

COGypsy

Honestly, I’ve just written off December. I’m just getting over almost 6 weeks of covid and my weight has been all over the place from that. Reduced activity, drastically reduced calorie intakes, random refeeds when I’d actually get a little hungry and just now getting back to any kind of normal routine. I decided to just let things settle out for December and see where I’m really at in January.

Walkywalkerson

COGypsy wrote: »

Honestly, I’ve just written off December. I’m just getting over almost 6 weeks of covid and my weight has been all over the place from that. Reduced activity, drastically reduced calorie intakes, random refeeds when I’d actually get a little hungry and just now getting back to any kind of normal routine. I decided to just let things settle out for December and see where I’m really at in January.

You're doing the right thing.
My food intake was all over the place too - just eat when you're hungry.
It's difficult when you can't taste or smell anything isn't it 😔
I wish you a speedy recovery 😊

rosebarnalice

I've been successful by having "save days" and "spend days" inside my weekly calorie budget. I'm typically under my daily goal on weekdays and over my goal on weekends, but it balances out.

I treat the holidays more or less the same: Did I spend a bit too much yesterday? Cool- I'll save a bit today.

cwolfman13

October through December I generally put on 8-10 Lbs. I've managed to maintain this year, but I'm also maintaining at about 20 Lbs over where I usually am. I'm not really trying to lose weight right now, though I have lost a couple of pounds in the last three weeks or so, but that will likely be squashed the week of Christmas when we have family come in and we are eating out much of the time. I'll worry about losing the weight in January, but I am taking December to ramp up my exercise as I have a plan for the new year and I want to be able to hit the ground running full steam, but I'm not quite there fitness wise right now to be able to do what I want to do. I should be good by January 1 though.

AnnPT77

Walkywalkerson wrote: »

I've been attempting to maintain over the last 2 months as I got Covid and just felt so poorly I couldn't think about what I was eating.
I just ate what I could stomach and counted the calories.
It turned out I was eating approximately maintenance calories so I have been trying to stick to that.
I'm recovered now - but its that time of year where there are more meals out and drinks etc ... so I've decided to carry on with maintenance calories until the New Year.
I lost around 4lbs with the virus - but have regained that in the last month which is pretty worrying as I'm supposed to be maintaining 😬
I don't want to get to January and be 10lbs heavier 😱
I'm still not at my goal yet and would like to lose another 15/ 20lbs
Does anyone have any advice on whether I should vary my calories maybe?
And allow for the higher calorie days with a deficit on others.
I'm finding eating at a deficit difficult at the moment.

I hate to say it, but I think the definition of "good strategy" is very individual, especially with the last few pounds (like where you are) and maintenance.

If one's been managing calories a long time, there's also "diet fatigue" potential, physical as well as psychological.

IMO, personalization is key. Our own preferences, strengths, limitations, skills, routine - they heavily influence what will be a practical (relatively-)easy to sustain routine.

So many people do well for a long time, but if life gets busy or fraught, that tiny bit of motivation/willpower evaporates, and things slip. The easier and more automatic your routine is, before you actually hit goal weight, the better. It gives you time to experiment, with the cushion of a small deficit, and groove in the habits that work best for you personally.

Maintenance practice during weight loss, sometime, but especially near the end - really good idea, IMO.

I've been in what I consider maintenance for over 6 years. My weight has drifted up and down, though entirely within a range that's a healthy weight for me, same clothes size. A couple of years back, those jeans were getting snugger, though, and I decided it was time to re-lose a few vanity pounds. I couldn't quite commit to a big deficit, just psychologically "ugh".

My normal practice is to eat a small bit under true maintenance calories (calorie bank), but only maybe 100-150 or so. I do that because I enjoy an occasional indulgent meal or day, but it's not a structured weekday/weekend pattern. (I'm retired - there are no weekdays/weekends, just days.) I probably tend to eat over maintenance calories once a week or so, but it varies lots, as does the magnitude of indulgence. I don't specifically try to balance banked calories with banked withdrawals at this point, just try to keep the indulgence occasional, and watch the scale.

When I decided to lose that maybe 10-15 vanity pounds, I just cut back on the frequency and magnitude of indulgences - I didn't eliminate them totally. The loss was ultra-slow: Looking backward to do math, it was an effective average daily deficit of only 100-150 calories . . . but over a year or so, I lost those pounds. It was practically painless.

I'm not saying you should do that (although it's an option). My point is that that it was personalized: It fit my established maintenance life patterns. It avoided a major deficit I didn't feel enthusiasm for. It took advantage of my trust in my counting practices and calorie needs. It recognized that I could be patient and not freak out when the scale (and even my weight-trending app) didn't really move downward observably for weeks at a time (because fluctuations often hide progress, when it's that slooooow.) I'm 100% confident that the same strategy wouldn't work universally, even with similar external circumstances.

Over the holidays, I usually just try to take on board the idea that the holidays are a few days. (In my case, it's November birthday, US Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas, New Years, with maybe a couple of extra days indulgence in there for truly special events.)

Treating the holidays as a season that starts in mid-November, goes into January: For me, very bad plan. Realistically, a lot of the so-called treats aren't that appealing to me anyway (low quality, not worth the calories if only in the name of seasonality), and I don't have to treat every holiday restaurant meal or happy hour any differently than I treat them the rest of the year, i.e., I can make reasonable choices, enjoy the social side, feel good.

Maybe I gain a pound or two over the two months. Meh. I know how to lose a pound or two. (During weight loss, what I did at the holidays wasn't enough to dramatically reduce the down-trend I was on at the time, but in maintenance it can be - just the different context.)

I think it's possible to blow these things up in our minds, make them insurmountable obstacles. (That could be said of "facing the holidays", "not feeling up to a deficit", etc., - though I'm not saying you're doing that. I don't know. I'm just asking you to consider it as a possibility.)

Most of the time, challenges of this nature are made up of a bunch of little parts: Behaviors, decisions, plans, specific events each of which may best be handled differently, etc.

For me, it works best to stay analytical about it, engage the specific parts relatively unemotionally . . . because the big, abstract picture can really weigh me down psychologically, make it seem unwinnable, encourage me to simply give up.

I can't handle (say) "survive the holidays without gaining any weight". I can easily survive "is this holiday event at a restaurant so special that I should budget extra calories", or "how many of these Christmas cookies do I eat, freeze for gradual use, give away (or not make in the first place just because that's what I always do)", and that sort of thing.

In your case in particular, I'd encourage you to mentally set aside the 4 regained pounds. For one, being sick is weird, and things happen, including potential water weight shifts that look like loss, or look like regain. For two, it's history. You can't retroactively change it, and whether it sets a behavioral pattern for the future is the relevant aspect. You have choices about that. It's only a slope in a negative direction if you keep moving in that direction. Choose otherwise.

Make plans at a granular level, tailor them to your strengths/limitations. Chip away at it. You can do this.

Best wishes . . . and happy holidays! 😉

Walkywalkerson

Thankyou @AnnPT77 😊
Such great advice!

Walkywalkerson

AnnePT77 said
"When I decided to lose that maybe 10-15 vanity pounds, I just cut back on the frequency and magnitude of indulgences - I didn't eliminate them totally. The loss was ultra-slow: Looking backward to do math, it was an effective average daily deficit of only 100-150 calories . . . but over a year or so, I lost "

I really like this strategy.
What you said before about diet fatigue is real!
I just cannot focus on a deficit at the moment - and 100/ 150 cals is definitely manageable.
Slow weight loss is fine by me - just as long as the weight is going down and not up!
😊

AnnPT77

Walkywalkerson wrote: »

AnnePT77 said
"When I decided to lose that maybe 10-15 vanity pounds, I just cut back on the frequency and magnitude of indulgences - I didn't eliminate them totally. The loss was ultra-slow: Looking backward to do math, it was an effective average daily deficit of only 100-150 calories . . . but over a year or so, I lost "

I really like this strategy.
What you said before about diet fatigue is real!
I just cannot focus on a deficit at the moment - and 100/ 150 cals is definitely manageable.
Slow weight loss is fine by me - just as long as the weight is going down and not up!
😊

It can be a good strategy, for sure. Fair warning: You do need to have quite a good level of confidence in your logging accuracy, to use that kind of strategy and get semi-reliable results. That's about a pound a month of fat loss. I don't know about you, but my weight fluctuates randomly day to day over at least a couple of pounds' range. The implication is that it can take over a month to be sure you're actually losing weight, even with a weight trending app. It doesn't take much in the way of logging errors to wipe out a 100-150 calorie daily deficit, too.

When I undertook this, I'd been logging for several years already, had a good handle on my maintenance calories (with or without exercise), had seen some correlation of my weight loss rate over long time periods with my logging habits, and that sort of thing. And I'm very much not a person who stresses over scale weight in the short run . . . honestly, sometimes I don't stress over it enough in the less-short run, which is kind of how I'd let those few vanity pounds creep on in the first place.

I'm not saying don't do it, because I think it's a good strategy in the right circumstances (obviously).

Your last statement "Slow weight loss is fine by me - just as long as the weight is going down and not up!" just made me a little nervous: There can be long-ish times when it doesn't seem like the weight *is* going down, with a deficit this small. My longest pseudo stall while doing this was around a month, but I'm absolutely confident/arrogant enough to believe that I was doing the right stuff, no matter what the scale and Libra said, and in fact I did get a scale drop of the expected size about 6 weeks out.

Another similar strategy to consider: Someone here - maybe it was @wunderkindking? - was I think setting goal calories at maintenance, then eating up to that much when hungry, but under the goal when it felt do-able, for a while, I believe with some kind of minimum calories in mind as well. I'm not sure it was her, but I've tagged her to (implicitly) ask.

Walkywalkerson

@AnnPT77
Yes maybe eating at goal maintenance is also an option - I'm 15/ 20 lbs from where I want to be - so maybe that could work.
Or with the other strategy of eating under that goal when I'm able.
Did you find a deficit difficult when you where nearer to goal?
I'm blaming my lack of drive on being unwell and I'm pretty hungry during the day especially now Christmas 'treats' have started to appear all around me 😱
I'm weak!

Lietchi

I'm also one of those people who have MFP set at maintenance (not goal maintenance, but actual maintenance) and any deficit is good by me.
On a rare 'good' day it can be a few hundred calories under (usually high exercise days), most days it's a tiny deficit of 50-100 calories, sometimes it's right at maintenance or even slightly over.

I've definitely found the last lbs harder. Sometimes I have whole weeks at/near maintenance (looking at the weekly average). Not so much mental diet fatigue, but my body just doesn't like to be pushed too hard anymore.

With 5 lbs left to lose (if I don't change my goal weight again), Libra thinks I'll reach my goal in June next year 😁 And even with 28 day smoothing, Libra shows me periods where my weight trend goes up, but I don't freak out about it when I know I've been doing the right things.

wunderkindking

AnnPT77 wrote: »

Walkywalkerson wrote: »

AnnePT77 said
"When I decided to lose that maybe 10-15 vanity pounds, I just cut back on the frequency and magnitude of indulgences - I didn't eliminate them totally. The loss was ultra-slow: Looking backward to do math, it was an effective average daily deficit of only 100-150 calories . . . but over a year or so, I lost "

I really like this strategy.
What you said before about diet fatigue is real!
I just cannot focus on a deficit at the moment - and 100/ 150 cals is definitely manageable.
Slow weight loss is fine by me - just as long as the weight is going down and not up!
😊

It can be a good strategy, for sure. Fair warning: You do need to have quite a good level of confidence in your logging accuracy, to use that kind of strategy and get semi-reliable results. That's about a pound a month of fat loss. I don't know about you, but my weight fluctuates randomly day to day over at least a couple of pounds' range. The implication is that it can take over a month to be sure you're actually losing weight, even with a weight trending app. It doesn't take much in the way of logging errors to wipe out a 100-150 calorie daily deficit, too.

When I undertook this, I'd been logging for several years already, had a good handle on my maintenance calories (with or without exercise), had seen some correlation of my weight loss rate over long time periods with my logging habits, and that sort of thing. And I'm very much not a person who stresses over scale weight in the short run . . . honestly, sometimes I don't stress over it enough in the less-short run, which is kind of how I'd let those few vanity pounds creep on in the first place.

I'm not saying don't do it, because I think it's a good strategy in the right circumstances (obviously).

Your last statement "Slow weight loss is fine by me - just as long as the weight is going down and not up!" just made me a little nervous: There can be long-ish times when it doesn't seem like the weight *is* going down, with a deficit this small. My longest pseudo stall while doing this was around a month, but I'm absolutely confident/arrogant enough to believe that I was doing the right stuff, no matter what the scale and Libra said, and in fact I did get a scale drop of the expected size about 6 weeks out.

Another similar strategy to consider: Someone here - maybe it was @wunderkindking? - was I think setting goal calories at maintenance, then eating up to that much when hungry, but under the goal when it felt do-able, for a while, I believe with some kind of minimum calories in mind as well. I'm not sure it was her, but I've tagged her to (implicitly) ask.

It was me! I did give myself a 1200 minimum because I didn't want to get too ridiculous with it. The odd day I wasn't feeling well, okay, but in general 1200-maintenance calories. It worked super well for me, and I think it might help OP here. I think the flexibility let me learn to follow hunger cues better, since appetite varies, but I also think a lot of it was mental. Took the pressure off, in most ways, because it was a lot easier to successful and mentally being able to say 'If I am still hungry I can eat and still be inside my calories' meant there wasn't some weird, low key panic at 'running out of' calories. It just really set me up for success and gave me some flexibility.

Still do that honestly, in maintenance, the deficit that happened just turned into 'banked' calories and I run my diary/logging on a kind of continuous week instead of restarting each day (Ie: I go back and 'fill in' previous days I was under so I come up about right on a weekly/biweekly basis.)

wunderkindking

Oh, reading the rest of the thread. I wasn't eating at goal maintenance. I mean maintenance for whatever my weight was, then. I also redid my goals every pound, instead of several, so I never 'lost' more than 10 calories at a time. Super easy and less painful.

Also oh heck yeah having a deficit got harder as I went. That said my 'I AM STARVING' period was about 30lbs out, still overweight and was the result of insufficient fat. I thought I was going to gnaw my arm off for a while. A week of eating an avocado a day handled it, LOL

AnnPT77

Walkywalkerson wrote: »

@AnnPT77
Yes maybe eating at goal maintenance is also an option - I'm 15/ 20 lbs from where I want to be - so maybe that could work.
Or with the other strategy of eating under that goal when I'm able.
Did you find a deficit difficult when you where nearer to goal?
I'm blaming my lack of drive on being unwell and I'm pretty hungry during the day especially now Christmas 'treats' have started to appear all around me 😱
I'm weak!

No, not really . . . but I intentionally slowed my weight loss as I got closer to goal.

By then, I already had a pretty clear idea of my calorie needs for X rate of weight loss (as observed over multi week periods), and that was needful because MFP estimates wrong, for me. I also had a good handle on what food choices and eating schedule tended to keep me mostly sated. (Satiation varies by individual, IMO, so I won't go into details here - other people can give you ideas, but not answers, in that area, IMO).

Loosely, somewhere around 20 or so pounds to initial goal weight, I was striving for about a pound a week loss rate on average, so around a 500 calorie deficit. At more like 10 pounds to go, I slowed that down further, aiming at more like half a pound. At the very end, as I hit goal range, I added calories gradually, so I drifted down toward the low end of my intended maintenance range before I got the maintenance routine at the point where I really wanted it.

I've felt hungry or crave-y at times (and sometimes I give in to that - it's one of the reasons I calorie bank by a small amount). But I haven't had whole major time periods where that was a persistent problem. It was more like a day or few here and there, not a pattern at some specific point. (It may help that I'm long menopausal: Sometimes the hormonal cycles cause hunger issues for younger women, for example. Some eat at maintenance for a week or so a month as a strategy.)

If things seem to be slipping in a tougher direction, I try to be analytic about it, see if I can find the trigger(s), maybe experiment to see if I can improve the situation. This can be food choice or time, but it can also be sleep, stress management, or a dozen other things that influence appetite.

I do tend to get a little crave-y as Fall comes on. I don't know whether that's mourning the end of fun outdoor exercise activities (my river freezes!), my Scandinavian genes signaling a need to fatten up for Winter, a touch of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) or what . . . but I've had to figure out how to deal with that. (It's some combo of indulgence with recognition that I have the calorie bank and can lose later, plus some moderation strategies that aren't important here.)

Some comments/questions about one thing:

You say "I'm blaming my lack of drive on being unwell and I'm pretty hungry during the day especially now Christmas 'treats' have started to appear all around me 😱
I'm weak!"

1. Don't self-define as weak - at least that's what I'd recommend. Self-definition is powerful, can become self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe define as "not having found the perfect strategy yet, still working on it".

2. Yes, being unwell can affect one's drive. Eating at maintenance (or close) when ill, and for a bit after, can be a good recovery strategy. We're not built to handle infinite stress. Being ill is a physical and psychological stress. A calorie deficit is a physical stress. Most of us have other physical and psychological stresses in our life. They're cumulative, and it's the totality of them at any given time that affects us. Drive (motivation, willpower, whatever) only spreads so thin. Gotta budget it, in my life.

3. I completely get how seeing Christmas treats can be tempting, cause cravings, and make things difficult. I don't get how they cause hunger (vs. cravings). The one thing I can think of is that if I indulge in some tempting but not very filling foods, especially foods that can create a blood-sugar roller coaster, then I'm more likely to feel hungry later. Moderation is useful, but not always achievable. One strategy is to figure out what to do if this happens.

It may or may not be true for you, but for me it's usually better overall to eat some thing(s) that fill out my day's nutrition in a calorie-efficient way, not to white-knuckle through the rest of the day to hit calorie goal. Usually, that would mean I eat a big bowl of mixed veggies, maybe a relatively calorie-efficient protein, depending on which of my nutritional goals aren't met yet. If that puts me a bit over calorie goal for the day, so be it. That gets me off the roller coaster, and doesn't so much set up more thrill rides the next day. YMMV on specifics, but the point is it can be useful to experiment, figure out what keeps the big picture the way you need it to be, on average. It's easy to over-focus on one day's calorie goal, lose the big picture.

Now, if the mere presence of treats is causing cravings, that's IMO more a matter of planning & practice. Plan how you're going to handle these things, as vividly as possible, like a little movie in your head. I'm not saying obsess about it. I'm saying spend 5 minutes or so thinking about scenarios likely to happen at the office (or the in-laws, or whatever), and having that vivid plan that you've practiced in your imagination. When the circumstances happen, run your plan. If it works, great, put it in your toolkit. If it doesn't, think of a different approach and rehearse that one vividly for next time. Be wily. Over time, you'll get things worked out.

Example scenario: Home-made office cookies. Options: Take none. Take one, save it for later. Take one, limit yourself to one, savor it slowly with full attention to maximize the enjoyment. Tell yourself you can budget 2 office treats per week, and when you've eaten those two, no more. And so forth. Pick a strategy, vividly rehearse, try it, evaluate.

The more often you give in to temptation unfettered, you're training your mind and body to give in. The more often you manage the temptations productively, you're training yourself to manage them. Try to train for what you want. The treats' siren song will be less tempting when you get in a routine that works, that you've practiced.

I think that "nothing tastes as good as thin feels" is a dumb saying, personally. (I know many people like it, which is fine . . . for them.) To me, some things do taste as good as thin feels, if we're comparing 2 minutes of each one side by side. But that's not how it works! I need to find the balance of some short-term pleasure, but the larger (more abstract, harder to commit to) pleasure of long term better health and functioning. It's about patterns, over time, I think.

Just my opinions, and waaaaayyy too long a ramble about them. Happy holidays!

Walkywalkerson

wunderkindking wrote: »

Oh, reading the rest of the thread. I wasn't eating at goal maintenance. I mean maintenance for whatever my weight was, then. I also redid my goals every pound, instead of several, so I never 'lost' more than 10 calories at a time. Super easy and less painful.

Also oh heck yeah having a deficit got harder as I went. That said my 'I AM STARVING' period was about 30lbs out, still overweight and was the result of insufficient fat. I thought I was going to gnaw my arm off for a while. A week of eating an avocado a day handled it, LOL

Lol I can relate to that STARVING feeling!
I have recently re evaluated my goal weight to be at BMI 21 so I am around 30 lbs away.
It's good advice to eat at maintenance calories - especially this time of year!