Hi! Excited about maintenance

Springfield1970

Hi all

I am very happy about the success I've had with MFP. I am at a fantastic weight/shape and very strong and just muscley enough to look athletic yet not scrawny. I'm 5'7" and 123lb. I've slowly been upping my maintenance cals. Started at 1500 but was still losing, then 1600 and have now bumped to 1700. I add my exercise cals separately as I train for triathlon and can do anything from 0 hours to 2.5 hours daily and like to change my fuelling to suit.

Anyway, I think my bmr is speeding up the more fat I lose. It sounds funny, but I feel like my body is a teenager again. Has anyone experienced this? I've just turned 43 so this is a nice present! I do weight training also and I think that is paying off more and more te heavier I lift and the longer period of time I've been doing it.

Do do think I can keep upping my maintenance cals? I would have thought at this low weight it would be a small number! If any of you are wondering why it seems so low, I am at my racing weight, trying to crack a 20 min 5k before the end of the year. My mid life crisis involves trying to qualify for the GB triathlon team for my age group! (It keeps me out of trouble with opposite sex mainly tbh!).

My goal is to firm up my lower body, lose an inch off each thigh, and keep my bf low (and find out what it actually is, my calipers are suggesting single figures but that is stupid, my scale says 24%).

I'm excited at eating at maintenance FINALLY and recomping a little more in the lower body.

Thanks for letting me ramble on , is anyone in a similar place?

heybales

Congrats.

I'll bet with that exercise and eating more and more now, you just keep making great body improvements that raises your LBM, and therefore your metabolism.

Do you have a BF scale that says it's for athletes?
Separate set of tables for athletes corresponding the resistance seen to BF%.

Have you found a HRM that seems decently accurate for knowing how much to refeed on? Like it has a VO2max self-test and stat you could change?

Springfield1970

Thanks Heybales!

I spent a lot of my life inadvertently eating into my LBM and I finally feel that with your guys wisdom I've cracked the code and finally got control back over my body after I lost it at age 16. This feels incredible. I know I'll never be able to be an instinctive eater as for some reason my appetite signals are buggered, but I've found the diet I love that works well for me.

I'm ignoring the bf numbers on my scale as I know they're wrong, but they are trending downwards. I've been teaching myself how to do calipers and those numbers seem really low, no matter where I pinch or what angle, it's always 2mm (except a couple of spots). I will get my pt mate to check my numbers soon.

My hrm is a garmin forerunner, no vo2max settings, but I'm pretty sure the readings are accurate. It asked for weight. By the way, the fitter I am the less calories I burn is that correct? I have a very high vo2max for my age, run the 1.5 mile in 10.44, hence my ambitious plans. I only started running in July 2012 and am still getting stronger and faster. I thought I had a ****y heart but it turns out to be an incredible thing that beats at 55 rest to 198 plus (I haven't been brave enough to REALLY test it).

Thanks for letting me ramble, and giving me feedback, see I told you I was excited! Life has brought some wonderful changes for me in the last year or two.

heybales

Garmins will base running on HR and pace/weight both, so much better than just one. Cycling though is just HR.
So interesting comparison of equal average HR's in a workout for running and cycling, to see how close the calorie burn is, should be close.
Unless FR 305 - that is not HR based.

Self calipers are hard, especially since the best estimates are 7-site methods, with 1 or 2 sites you cannot reach yourself.
In the hands of a skilled person they can be 5% accurate, as well as a couple of measurement methods that use many spots are 5%.
Mix a bunch of 5%'s together and increase accuracy.

Incredible HRmax, that should be in the HRM too, replacing their calculated one which is very wrong. I'd add at least 5 to max you've seen for better HRmax estimate.

The fitter you are, the lower the HR has to be to burn the same number of calories. That's where the increased VO2max, and why important for HRM to know it's better, comes in to play. You are supplying in fewer heart beats and slower breathing the same volume of oxygen now, to burn the same amount of calories. What the fuel is has shifted to fat more also.

Your efficiency at any movement will get better to some degree and you'll burn slightly less calories because of that, but if pace/weight was equal and you got more efficient, HR would go down too showing that was the fact.

So if you made your training totally pace based and never went faster as you got more efficient, you'd burn slightly less calories and avgHR would go down slightly.
If you kept the pace the same and weight went down too, you'd burn even less calories and avgHR would go down decently.

That's why you make the training HR based, so it's still a workout for the heart, or recovery workout if that's the focus for a specific workout.
So now HR is kept the same, but that means it's supplying more oxygen to fuel more calorie burn, and you are going faster.

Hah - beat you on the rambling front, and I could have kept going on the implications there for training at same HR.

Springfield1970

Hi

Thanks HeyBales for your reply. Yes I've found I am running faster at a lower heart rate both. It's the fat loss, as too short a time period has gone past to be fitness improvement. I read somewhere that I have less fat to compete for oxidisation for my muscles during exercise.

Nearly done with finding out my maintenance, I think it's between 1700-1750, and I'm sure my exercise calories are spot on now..

I am cruising at 124lbs, finding maintenance relatively difficult to be honest. Combination of old binge patterns, reaching goal weight, not liking the feeling of hunger AT ALL. I WILL win though, coz god I look good in jeans and shorts now!, Plus the fitness and strength to weight ratio is pretty good.

Am finding the build periods tiring, and need to re assess my training/rest times as I am having my sleep affected, even on rest days. I need to remember that I have really only serious about fitness for 14 months, so need time to build and probably won't be able to train 400 hours per year without some issues. I am determined to be in top condition for 2015 try outs for my next age group up which will be 45-50 and I'll be 44 and have higher chance of getting in team.

The great thing about knowing maintenance is I can
A) rest without panicking about weight gain. In fact, I drop water and weigh even less, and measure less too during days off.
add 200-300 cals per day and properly bulk if need be.
C) take away 100-200 and know I'm burning fat.

I'm sure if I eat more veg fruit fat and fibre I will be less hungry on rest days, and on training days, I feel like I get to eat the house down (though I could keep eating and eating, like the old days when I always satisfied my hunger but cruised at 132-140lbs which didn't look good or fit).

What do you think about my bulking and cutting numbers? I don't want to add more muscle or lies weight, but my bum and upper thighs are still flabby.

greedygirl118

1750 without exercise cals, presumably?

I do way less exercise than you - mainly walking, pilates and zumba/ballet - but my TDEE is about 2,300-2,400 on average (I wear a Fitbit). I am 5'8 and 140 lbs, which is a good weight for me with my hourglass body type. I fast once a week, and am maintaining, but people keep asking if I've lost weight! So presumbably I am making body fat improvements, although I have no idea what my BF is.

Springfield1970

Hi! Thanks for your reply Greedygirl (we got something in common, I loooooove fooooood too!)

Yes. That's before I add exercise cals. What is the official name of that 1700-1750 number BEFORE exercise cals are on? I think Net cals or maintenance? Yes your cals sound about right. You're prob carrying way more LBM than me. I eat about 1750-2600 per day depending on what I'm doing. It would be great to up it even more, but I should be grateful for what I've got! Looking a bit manly on upper body very defined and flat boobs so don't want to get any bigger or lose weight. Still bit wobbly on butt so maybe recomp a tiny bit there. Maybe focus more on lower body weights?

Or maybe just be very happy for what I've got and concentrate on the exceedingly difficult job of maintaining and feeding my workouts to get faster and able to have greater endurance. Even professional athletes don't count their calories this carefully, according to Matt Fitzgerald. I think Lance Armstrong did, but a lot of them don't.

Can I be nosy and ask your measurements and what frame you have?

heybales

If you really don't want to add any more muscle, you'll have to keep in a slight deficit and hope your body takes the fat from where you want it gone.
May, may not.

Or stay at maintenance, and keep on lifting. Same response, just slower, but with potential for better body improvement, while the fat drops.

Those are good numbers for bulk/cut, but you'll find it very slow going, as women will be. Bulking you'd be expecting with surplus eating and protein and great program, maybe 6 lb muscle gain a year. Upwards of 12 if all newbie gains the whole time.

You can try to enhance it like you are doing, more calories the 24 hrs post lift to enhance repair and improvements, less calories the other 24 hrs prior to lifting.

Springfield1970

Excellent thanks HeyBales for walking me through this. Now I know my maintenance I'm going to stay at

A) maintenance on rest days 1750
-100 cals plus eat exercise cals on aerobic days (burn fat)
C) +100 cals plus eat exercise cals on lifting days (post lifting protein load)(build muscle)

In a nutshell, a SLOW recomp, with no deficits or risk of injury or metabolic slowdown. As I am training so much, I need to be eating highly nutritious foods and not short changing myself.

Wish me luck! My appetite is through the roof now I've upped my calories, therefore maintenance is far more difficult than deficit and this will be difficult to pull off.

I am hoping to up that bmr number depending on how I get on. It will compensate for my exercise burn going down as I get fitter. My hope is eventually eat more instinctively and be able to relax more, though I have a lot of studying and trial and error to go through yet.

Never managed to get to the answer with the body fat so I'm going with measurements. My old skinny jeans that used to be tight have suddenly loosened. They are very rigid so they haven't stretched. I think they are my best barometer.