Hitting maintenance in a complicated time

Egotrapped

I hit my goal weight Aug 18. I am now 4 pounds below that even though I have been adding calories every day. I i’m trying to figure out how many calories I should eat a day and maintain. Seems kind of crazy to say this, but I don’t want lose more.

The thing is, I don’t have a lot of time to figure this out. I am having surgery October 5 and will be in the hospital for 3-4 days. Then I have a time of convalescence at home which will last about 12 weeks. ( before I can drive)

I worked hard to get the weight off. I don’t want to keep losing but I don’t want to balloon up when I’m in the hospital and then at home when my daughter in law will be talking care of me.

I will not be able to drive to the store, so I will be relying on others to do that and to fix my meals.

Maybe I should just take a break and hope for the best -when this is all over I can go back to tracking — Maybe I’ve answered my own question😊.

Any advice would be helpful. Any tips from would be helpful.

herringboxes

I think a break would be the right choice. Your focus needs to be on healing, and you’ll want to have adequate nutrition for that. Trying to deal with logging will be stressful for both you and your DIL.

You will be improving over time so it’s not like it will be 12 weeks totally out. Maybe you don’t worry about weight at all for 4 weeks. Then maybe you can keep a bit of an eye on it for the next 4 weeks, just making sure you’re not going crazy but not worrying about hitting maintainence dead on (err a bit over not under while healing). Then maybe start tracking calories again loosely after that. Then at 12 weeks you can have a look and make a plan.

If you have to lose 12 pounds or whatever at that point, so be it, you’ve got this. You know how to do it.

Of course you’ll have additional water weight as well, because that is part of healing. It won’t all be fat. Remind yourself of that.

Good luck.

mtaratoot

You are in a conundrum, but fortunately it's not a big one.

There are several complicating factors:

• You are transitioning from weight loss to weight maintenance; that means an increase of caloric intake.
• You are about to have a significant reduction in activity (I presume); that means a decrease of caloric intake.
• Your body is about to spend time repairing itself from damage; that means an increase of caloric intake.
• You will not have 100% control of what foods are available for consumption
• Even if your convalescence allows you enough movement to get on your scale, the healing process can include inflammation which will affect what the scale tells you.

How long did it take you to get to your goal weight?

How fast were you losing during your loss, especially at the end?

What calorie deficit were you aiming for at the end of your loss?

If you can answer those three questions, you might be able to be mindful of what you eat. You can still log what you eat. You can try to eat food with plenty of nutrition to help your body heal, and you can focus on not going overboard. You have a clue what that looks like because you just got to your goal weight.

If you eat a surplus of 100 calories per day over maintenance, in 12 weeks that would be 8400 excess calories and you'd gain about 2.5 pounds. That's insignificant in maintenance. My weight can go up and down far more than that in one day. It has been bouncing around quite a lot lately; up four pounds today in fact. I was down four pounds in two days late last week.

Don't let this add more stress to your recovery. Focus on healing, and be mindful of what you're eating. When you're recovered enough to get back after it, you know what you'll have to do.

middlehaitch

Ooh quite a conundrum you have.

If you hit maintenance on the 24 August, and have lost an extra 4 lbs in the 24 days until now, September 11, you are in a daily deficit of 583 calories, according to the maths.
(You can use your actual numbers to be more accurate)

If I were you I would probably up my cals immediately by 400-500 cals a day, providing my activity level was the same as the past 24 days to halt the weight loss.
Keep in mind that there will probably be an initial weight gain due to extra water retention through an increase in carbs and extra food transiting your digestive tract.

I would also up my protein now to approx 0.8g of body weight or 0.1g lean body weight (if your intake is lower). This will help in muscle retention while you are inactive and help with healing.

Check with MFP or whatever calorie calculator you have been using to see what calories you will need for ‘sedentary maintenance’ so you have an idea of what your calorie intake will be while healing and what adjustments you may need to make (still keeping protein at above levels)

Even though you will have less control over your food choices you can still keep your intake relatively steady by learning what your food portion sizes are by eyeballing instead of weighing. Taking pics of meals may help both you and your daughter in law with this.

Not sure what your surgery is but once home and feeling a little better do try to keep your body moving around the house by doing simple stretches etc.

If you have PT post surgery, do it. It really does make a big difference to long term recovery.

Finally, even if you find calorie control is the least of your worries and you do gain a few lbs once you are active and back to being yourself again remember you know how to lose weight.

Good luck,
Cheers, h.