How I Maintain My Current Weight Without Going Crazy Over Calories

fitnessexpert97

Hey everyone! 👋
I’ve been on the weight-loss rollercoaster before, but after finally reaching my goal, I realized that maintaining weight can be just as challenging as losing it — especially without obsessing over every calorie.

Here’s what’s been working for me:

• I still track my meals, but I allow myself flexibility within my maintenance range.
• I use bodyweight exercises 4–5 times a week to stay active without needing a gym.
• I focus on protein-rich meals, especially post-workout. A good protein powder has been a game-changer for keeping my hunger in check and helping with recovery.
• Instead of aiming for perfection, I focus on consistency. Some days are cleaner than others, but balance keeps me sane.

What about you?
Would love to hear what tricks or daily habits help you maintain your current weight without burnout. Let’s support each other in this maintenance phase!

nossmf

Just want to elaborate on your mention of "maintenance range" for anybody not familiar with the term.

Lots (most?) of people losing weight have a hard number they want to reach on the scale: "I will lose until I weigh x!" (Even if your goal is to lose 40lbs, it's the same target in reverse…your original weight minus your goal drop equals the target weight.) This single number becomes a kind of mantra, a magic bullet. Discussions on the psychology aside, it helps to have a goal when losing weight.

But when you reach this goal and decide to switch to maintenance, it is not a good idea to keep this single number as the only acceptable weight. The human body naturally goes up and down from one day/hour/minute to the next, and you will drive yourself crazy obsessing over staying EXACTLY at this magic number.

Instead, it's a good idea to figure out a range of values. For example, if my goal weight while losing was 100kg (220 lbs), then in maintenance I may select a range of a few kgs/lbs on either side, say 98-102kg (215-225 lbs). Now when I weigh myself, if my weight falls anywhere inside this range, I call it a good day. Only when my weight creeps outside of the range do I do anything about it.

The size of the range is highly personal: one person will prefer 1kg / 2 lb on either side, another may prefer 3kg / 7 lb each side. Too large of a range may encourage a return to lazy eating patterns; too narrow a range heightens anxiety from normal daily fluctuations.

AnnPT77

I like your bullet points, OP.

I'm maybe a little different, but I hope I can say that without detracting from your good info . . . and maybe we just use different terms for the same ideas, dunno.

Personalization of tactics - knowing myself, in the individual case - is really important IMO . . . essential, even. To me, that implies that somewhat different things will work for different people. I'll give a personal example.

As pretty much an unapologetic hedonistic aging hippie flake, I knew that I would be happier long term if I built periodic indulgences into my maintenance plan. Occasionally, I'm going to want the whole basket of deep-fried beer-battered fresh mushrooms, or even a whole deep-dish pizza just for me. I'm not going to catastrophize over that, or feel guilt. What I've chosen to do is eat a little under maintenance calories most of the time, to indulge occasionally.

I'm not talking about big calories under, because that could set up binge/restrict cycles. I don't want the indulgent times to be actual binges, i.e. out of control eating. They're intentional decisions, and need to be. And that's OK, if it's built into the plan, and as long as I accept the results of my decisions as an adult should 😉. So, most days I eat 100 or so calories under what I believe my true maintenance calories to be. (I do still calorie count, because that's easy and stress-free for me. I know that's not true for everyone, either.)

Once in a while, I eat over maintenance, occasionally way over maintenance. If my weight creeps up long term - and it has now and then - I need to creep it back down before the weight gets out of control. Since I hate to clothes shop - to an extent where they maybe ought to revoke my "normal woman" card 😆? - I creep my weight back down if my jeans get a little snug with the Winter long underwear underneath. That's another personalization, using my fiery hatred of clothes-shopping. (It's also an endorsement of nossmf's maintenance-weight range concept.)

So, for me, that's part of the definition of "balance". Is it part of the definition of "consistency"? I don't know. If "consistency" means "working with long term averages" and "adjusting when needed", yes. If it means eating close to maintenance calories every day and not going over, then no.

Which brings me to exercise and consistency: Consistency isn't always possible, in the sense of maintaining the same schedule. As just one example that popped up recently in my 9+ years of maintenance so far, this past November I cleverly lost my balance, fell, whacked my head on a brick sidewalk, bled like crazy, got a skull fracture and brain bleed, spent several days in the hospital, starting in the trauma department and neurology ICU. I didn't exercise at all for a couple of weeks because of extreme fatigue. Zero workouts is quite unusual for me, because I love my activities. (Choosing activities I enjoy is also a maintenance strategy, BTW.) Even after that no-exercise interlude, I was restricted to very low exertion - talk in whole sentences kind of exertion at most - for more weeks. Needless to say, exercise calories dropped a lot.

For me, one of the beauties of the MFP method was figuring out something close to my maintenance calories with or without exercise. For that month plus of reduced exercise, I did fine, because of that. That's not the first time I've limited exercise in 9+ years, but one of the more extreme. Any of us can have times like that: Illness, surgical recovery, injury, etc. At age 69, I probably have higher risk of some of those things, so that's another maintenance strategy for me.

So, to me, "balance" is about good overall life balance; working with my very personal preferences, strengths, limitations and lifestyle; and taking responsibility for my own choices. I won't guarantee I'll maintain forever, but so far, so good.

patriciafoley1

When I get to maintenance, I plan on letting myself have two meals a week, having whatever I want. So if I want to eat three slices of pizza, or a piece of coffee cake or a doughnut, that's going to happen. The rest of the week I am going to keep to my diet plan. If I lose weight to the point of being underweight doing this (haha, like that would happen) I will up it to three meals a week of whatever I want. If I gain weight, I will cut it to one meal a week of whatever I want. That seems like a plan to me. Any thoughts?

nossmf

While it sounds logical, it also sounds like you're still thinking about depriving yourself of things you enjoy most of the time. Even during my weight loss, I still have daily desserts, weekly donuts, monthly pizza and burgers and fried chicken. I just fit them into my daily calorie plan.

patriciafoley1

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/48570142#Comment_48570142

I have a little bit of sugar free chocolate everyday as a snack. Burgers are not an issue, though I'd rather have a small steak which I have several times a week for dinner. For fried chicken, i love the low carb (chickpea flour coated) Realgood foods frozen chicken strips. In the air fryer they are delicious and taste like regular fried chicken at only 140 calories for 4 ounces. But pizza, doughnuts and coffee cake, which i mentioned, have carbs. Because I am a T2 diabetic, working on getting my blood sugar consistently under control, those can't be regular treats. When I get down to goal weight, I will trying adding those in, in limited quantities, once or twice a week, and monitor my blood sugar to ensure it doesn't derail all my hard work. I probably wasn't clear on that. It's not calories that are as much an issue for restrictions. I'm very happy most of the time at 1200. It's carbs that are a problem, and at least right now, I can't eat them every day if I want to reverse my T2.

nossmf

T2 is a game changer, certainly.

Canarias1969

I reached my goal weight about 6 months ago, and managing to keep it by doing regular exercise 4-5 times a week. I do a variety of bodyweight training, Pilates, calisthenics, body sculpt and weight training (just dumbbells) and LOTS of walking.

I still track my meals also, keeping to 1700 net calories a day on average. I have cheat days, but it all balances out over the week.

I cook everything from scratch, so I know what's in my foods, also I'm very picky to eat out :-) , focusing on high protein / low carb most of the time. I have a sweet tooth, so I use sweeteners instead of sugar and find healthier alternatives (like applesauce instead of oil, bananas instead of butter, etc) in my baking.

I know it's probably not for everyone, but it works for me 😊

witchyanna

while cutting/going for goals you have to go hard to stay on track, for maintenence you have to find somewhere you're happy indefinitely and don't feel like you're depriving yourself. what feels like a treat but is healthy? what isn't super healthy but you love it that you can eat less of, less frequently, in a way that makes it feel more special? what exercises do you genuinely enjoy doing that you can do regularly?

DiscusTank5

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/48568998#Comment_48568998

I'm just here to say that I'm very thankful for your full recovery @AnnPT77.

Maintenance has always scared me, so I'm lurking now to be mentally ready when I get there some time this fall.

rsccore

First off, when I say "simply", I mean simply in the technical sense, on paper, it wasn't simple at all in reality, or I would have done it much sooner.:) But short version is at 255 lbs and sedentary my TDEE was 2300 calories, and at 160 lbs and moderately active, my TDEE is also 2300 calories. So that is all I did, went into a state of restriction (1500 calories), a ton of exercise to get back into shape and enhance the weight loss, and landed at my old normal of 160 lbs and moderately active in 9 months. And just eat again, but a three squares a day version rather than the disordered mess it had become. It was a non-event at the end, I just started eating again, and haven't counted (food) calories since. That was my second attempt. My first attempt, I lost 30 lbs and gained it back with a focus on just eating less. After some reflection and given that I was active and lean the first half of my life before the "desk job", I changed the approach to what is the common recommendation of losing the weight and becoming more active to raise your TDEE back up. Why did I choose to raise it back up to the 2300 calories I started with? Well, that is something you can experiment with, but when looking back at my younger days of more demanding jobs and the army etc., when I was eating even more than 2300 calories, it seemed to be a good target for me, and that turned out to be true.

As far as ending this with "just eating", that is all I am really used to. I was born in the 60s, before the sedentary challenges we have today, and obesity was uncommon and pretty much everyone "just ate". And when I looked around more, even at this moment, pretty much everyone is just eating, regardless of their weight, and the lighter people who have kept things in check, don't even know what calorie counting means. Thus it made sense that this can end naturally, and it did.

But I know 100% that this all relies on me being intentionally moderately active, unlike my younger days when I was naturally moderately active due to jobs and the environment then. So that was my focus through the weight loss journey, developing the disclipline and habits around being more active.