Confused about Maintenance calories

xSTx

After 17 months of losing weight I have finally reached my goal, dropping 182 lbs! I started reading up on and preparing for maintenance with my last 10lbs to go but now that the time has come I've found myself a bit lost and confused about how many calories I should be eating. I have read alot of great tips on here about gradually increasing my calories and what has been working for others but I would appreciate any help you can send my way!

Here are my stats
Female, 25, Ht 5'4
SW 320lbs
GW140lbs
CW 137lbs
UGW 135lbs

MFP is advising me to consume 1580 for maintenance. I just bumped my calories up today to 1450, I was consuming between 1300-1350 calories for the past month and 1250 over the past 6 months while eating back exercise calories.

I'm mostly concerned about my sodium intake (I try to eat under 2000mg daily) and of course overall maintenance!

Thanks guys !

ellantz8

I don't have any advice for you, but congratulations on your amazing transformation! You should be so proud of yourself! You lost almost two thirds of your body weight, now that is quite the accomplishment!

nxd10

You're my hero! That is amazing. Congratulations.

This sounds like a good plan. I also watch my sodium carefully. It shows up in so many weird places.

Approach maintenance just like you did weight loss. Log everything. Stick to your calories. Eat back your exercise calories. See what happens after a few weeks with your new higher calories.

heybales

Pick your last weigh-in date and the 4 full weeks prior to that.
Hopefully your food diary was correct during that time, no missing data in other words.

How much did you lose in total during that time?

Multiply by 3500 (assuming it was all fat weight hopefully) = total deficit calories during that 4 weeks.
Divide by 4, divide by 7 = avg daily deficit you caused.

Now, for that same time period, go back through your diary, phone may be easier, and write down or put in to spreadsheet how much you ate total each day, not NET, Gross, total eaten, add it up.
Divide by 4, divide by 7 = avg daily eaten.

Add avg daily eaten to daily deficit you saw = your maintenance for the level of activity you did during that time period.

Hopefully that was about avg exercise anyway.

Eat that much daily, and you don't have to eat back exercise calories, actually do not eat them back with this method.

You WILL gain water weight when you eat more, same water weight that was a big part of your initial loss.
Live with it, it's in your muscles along with the glucose that finally got topped off again. Be glad it's in your muscles, it's more LBM, that raises your metabolism.

Don't try to lose that water weight, you do know what will happen when you eat more again, right?

At that point, eating that much daily and doing the same workouts as during that 4 weeks, and as active during the day as then., just watch your weight about a month at a time. Daily you would still have normal water weight fluctuations. Weekly too if you weigh at invalid times.

If you have strong workouts, you will likely continue to lose fat as body makes improvements now that you are eating more. Some improvements that have water weight as part of them will cause a gain even as inches drop. Like endurance cardio, or lifting and weighing when still repairing.

Congrats, great work.

Maintenance will be hard, perhaps harder. You have to keep from freaking out over minor 1-3 lb gains and losses, knowing what they are and are not (can't gain 3 lbs fat over the weekend, nor muscle).

Start practicing eyeballing food and then weighing or measuring to train your ability for portions. Until you can nail it each and every time.

heybales

Congrats! you've done so great, I'd like to know too, my TDEE is 1824 and BMR 1524 so don't know what to eat for maintenence either , I was thinking what you were a gradual increase of 50 for each wk at time until it levels out..

You eat your TDEE for maintenance, both terms mean the same thing. If you mean getting your TDEE nailed down, read the post right above yours.

50 is in the range of all kinds of inaccuracies though, just make it 250 more.

250 calories eaten daily over true maintenance would only cause a 1 lb gain in 2 weeks. 1 lb. And if you had a good workout, that wouldn't even be fat.

xSTx

Thanks everyone ! Appreciate it !

dolphin_queen

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