I have 8lbs to go, time for maintenance plan help

Melissaol

I have 8lbs to go to reach my goal. I'm 5'5" I'm not sure what to do. I have heard that maintenance is hard. Any ideas?

Commander_Keen

keep what you are doing until you have lost the 8lb and reached your goal. Then we can talk about maintenance.

sijomial

Some people find it hard, some people find it easy - a lot depends on how you lose your weight and your whole relationship with food.
I lost my weight eating exactly the same foods I enjoy at maintenance, just smaller portions. And I love eating nice food so not surprisingly I find maintenance much more enjoyable than losing weight.

Two main options really:
1/ Keep losing until at goal weight and then slowly walk up your calories week by week until you find your maintenance calories.
2/ Start adding calories when you have a few pounds left to go to goal so that weight loss slows and you effectively have a "soft landing" to maintenance.

Whichever option you choose you shouldn't currently have a very large deficit with only 8lbs to go.

geekyjock76

Sijomial is right. Those who thought about maintenance beforehand and structured their fat loss strategy to closely mirror life in maintenance have a much easier time. Also, people who periodically decreased the deficit as they got closer to goal are less likely to feel paranoid about upping calories since the increase would be minimum. Lastly, having a good relationship with food is important as well.

In addition to this, continue exercising, weighing and logging your food and do bi-monthly weigh-ins.

secret1386

Congrats!!!! I too am 8lbs from maintenance and I'm 100% ready for it. Not because I want to start shoving tons of food in my mouth and air high fiving myself continuously though i might do that the first day, but more because i'm ready to complete a goal and start on a new one! Try what works best for you, weight comes and goes but remember it's always easier to put it on then take it off. Proud of you for staying dedicated and seeing it through. Just keep pushing a little further and I will air high five you too.

albionjen

If you have a big deficit at the moment (more than 500kcal per day) then I think you might consider upping your calorie target. Otherwise I would say keep going and worry about maintainance calories when you get there!

I'm also close to my goal, only planning to lose a couple of kg more (about 4lb). So, I can share what I have been doing in case it helps.

When I had about 5kg left to go (10lb) I upped my calorie target to lose more slowly. Since the end of January, I only lose about 0.5-1lb per week at most. Also I am not as strict about keeping to the calorie target either :laugh: If I have some weeks where I go out for a meal or two or have a weekend away with friends and don't manage to lose any weight then I don't really care at this point.

Now I am within a healthy weight range, my "goal" is not a particular weight any more but to be happy with my body and feel fit and healthy. I want to be able to fit into a UK size 10 for trousers. At the moment I am very slightly too big for size 10 in most stores, and size 12 is too baggy which makes buying clothes annoying. I reckon another couple of kg will sort out that problem if I continue working out as well!

Once I hit my size goal, I plan on adding 100 calories to my target every couple of weeks and using that to work out where I should be to maintain my weight. But I think it will be somewhere between 1900-2100kcal. Perhaps even a bit more, since I am still losing weight eating around 1700-1800kcal a day at the moment. Hopefully by the summer I will have managed to figure it all out! I don't care if I end up a little bit under my current "goal weight", since that is still well within the healthy range. If you don't want to go lower than your goal weight then it probably makes more sense to start adding calories to the target before you hit the goal.

Good luck!

bagge72

It's really not that hard, most of the time you get to eat more than you have been while losing so it makes it easier. What some people do is when they get close to maintenance is to set there calorie goal at the maintenance amount. The weight comes of a little bit slower usually, but then you don't have to change anything once you get there.

themedalist

My strong suggestion is to develop a plan for maintenance, just as you had a plan to lose weight. My maintenance plan has been tested and tweaked and it's a good fit for me. It's just not possible for me to regain the 50 pounds that I've lost if I stick with my plan.

I wrote a blog post on the importance of having a mainteance plan, if you want to take a look:

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/themedalist/view/what-s-your-maintenance-plan-624676

Best Wishes!