Help me I think I screwed up.

TammyVieu

I have been trying to figure out maintenance for a while now and just can't figure it out. Here are my stats. 5ft 3in 110 lbs age 35. I started at 184 2 years ago and lost the first 50 pounds on weight watchers. Did not see sucess after the plan changed so at the advice of a friend I switched to mfp. I pu my faith in the calculations and did not take tbe time to do any reasearch. Mfp gave me 1200 cals and that is what I consumed. I usually didn't eat back exercise cals which I admit weren't many anyway. Maybe 100 per day. I lost 34 more pounds. Now I am at goal and mfp gives me 1470 cals for maintenance. Problem is for the past 3 months I have been trackng my weight daily and using the averages and it shows a consistent gain. After 2 weeks of gain I go back to 1200 tyen back up afte losing the gain. My question is have I totally screwed up my body and if so what should I do about it? Thinking about quitting counting for a month and then restart suing tdee method to either maintain or lose whatever gains I have after the month.

tigersword

Water weight gains are expected and normal when going back to maintenance from a deficit due to glycogen replenishment.

Chenoachem

I have been on Maintenance for 2 years. I have found that mfp calculates maintenance calories too high. What I found worked best for me was to split the difference between what mfp said for 1lb /week and maintenance and setup a custom calorie amount. That turned out to be about 1400 calories a day for me, plus I eat back my workout calories calculated by my HRM.

Good Luck. Great job on the weight loss.

Binkie1955

I've been on weight watchers. good program. believe it or not, it's essentially a low carb program. if you're concerned about the MFP default setup use the ketogenic calculator to reset your MFP goals and see if that reset doesn't help you. the default setting on MFP allows more carbohydrates than my recollection of WW does. so that may be your challenge. Also, it's not too hard to reverse engineer your goals from WW to MFP.


http://keto-calculator.ankerl.com/

Siansonea

If you lose weight at 1200 calories, but gain weight at 1470 calories, you ought to split the difference and see how that goes. As you get older you'll have to cut calories or add exercise, it's a calibration process to see what your body responds to. Online calculations only take you so far, watch how your body responds to different calorie levels. Try 1350 for awhile, and if you lose the weight you regained, then you know your maintenance level is slightly higher than that.

Siansonea

Also, a difference of eating plus or minus 270 calories a day isn't going to "screw up your body". What do you think is going to happen? Suddenly you have a totally different metabolism? Nope, it doesn't work like that.

tigersword

Guys, the OP is talking about bouncing back and forth every week or two. There is no weight gain here, it's water fluctuations.

TammyVieu

Maybe I should have been clearer, I wonder if maybe I messed up my metabolism by eating too few calories. Wonder if anyone else had this problem and if they were able to reverse it.

bcattoes

Maybe I should have been clearer, I wonder if maybe I messed up my metabolism by eating too few calories. Wonder if anyone else had this problem and if they were able to reverse it.

Exercise will up your metabolism.

Greenrun99

Water weight gains are expected and normal when going back to maintenance from a deficit due to glycogen replenishment.

This, especially if you been low carb.. expect that water weight to be anywhere from 5-10lbs.

theopenforum

Water weight gains are expected and normal when going back to maintenance from a deficit due to glycogen replenishment.

This ^

You have not screwed up your body at all. It took me about 3 months for me to get a good grasp on what my real maintenance level was. My body type and what I am wanting to achieve is one of those things I had to learn how to do on my own. You should not overreact to every little gain. Your weight will fluctuate a bit due to water retention, salt, time of weigh in, take your pick. They are all valid. Coming back a few 100 calories won't hurt but just don't overreact to your scale.

Hope that helps

Tof

tigersword

Maybe I should have been clearer, I wonder if maybe I messed up my metabolism by eating too few calories. Wonder if anyone else had this problem and if they were able to reverse it.

But why do you think that? You increased your calories by about 300 and gained water weight, then immediately cut them back and lost the water weight. You keep repeating the cycle. If anything that's hurting you more than anything else. You aren't giving your glycogen stores enough time to stabilize, you're just bouncing back and forth like a rubber band. Impossible toi make any kind of conclusion or give any kind of advice from that.

cwolfman13

Guys, the OP is talking about bouncing back and forth every week or two. There is no weight gain here, it's water fluctuations.

I'm going with this....

OP...when you go to maintenance there is going to be some gain due to the fact that you are restoring your glycogen stores which are chronically depleted when you're in a calorie deficit...it's completely normal. Glycogen and water have weight...you need to give it more time than just a couple of weeks to actually establish any kind of trend.

There is nothing wrong with your metabolism...you're just experiencing what every one experiences in maintenance...nice, full glycogen stores...now go put them to good use and crush the frackin' **** out of a workout.

Here's a good read as well...

http://justinowings.com/understanding-bodyweight-and-glycogen-de/