thoughts on eating @ maintenance level for wight loss

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hookilau
hookilau Posts: 3,134 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I've read where you can find the maintenance level for your desired goal weight & eat at that level.

For instance, my goal weight is 110#, to maintain that weight at 5' tall & fairly active, I need about 1500 calories per day.

Is it fair to say that with less than 15# to get to my goal weight, I can use this number?

Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated =)

Replies

  • logg1e
    logg1e Posts: 1,208 Member
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    I think a lot depends upon how accurate the person is at counting calories, logging their food, measuring their exercise calories, eating them back etc. That must vary from person to person.

    Why don't you give it a go for a couple of weeks?
  • americangirlok
    americangirlok Posts: 228 Member
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    I've read that too. I mean I'd think it'd work b/c it would still likely have you netting a deficit.
  • hookilau
    hookilau Posts: 3,134 Member
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    I have, but I'm afraid I've muddied the waters a bit. 1500-1600 cal per day leaves me hungry :grumble: So I've had a few days where I ended up eating at a higher amount, yet staying under 2000.

    Did that for about 2 weeks & my weight fluctuated from 125-128.

    I'm comfortable at about 17-1800 cal/day and I guess I'm trying to find a reason to go with the lower amount. I realize it's only a couple of hundred calories difference, but don't know if I should suck it up & get used to it or what =P
  • Oneironaut
    Oneironaut Posts: 43 Member
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    Have you tried eating a higher amount of protein/fat? Those are generally more filling on a per calorie basis than carbs are. I find it much easier to stay under my calorie goals on the days when I consume lower amounts of carbs.
  • hookilau
    hookilau Posts: 3,134 Member
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    I've read that too. I mean I'd think it'd work b/c it would still likely have you netting a deficit.

    Right.
    That brings me to my maintenance at my current weight,(127ish) which I think is likely around 1800-2000 calories, so a 4-500 cal/day cut brings me to 15-1600 cal.

    Duh :blushing:

    Thanks for helping me work this out...it can be sooo confusing & the one thing I've learned is that as soon as I think I've learned something, the rules change :tongue: and it turns out I know *nothing* at all!
  • hookilau
    hookilau Posts: 3,134 Member
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    Have you tried eating a higher amount of protein/fat? Those are generally more filling on a per calorie basis than carbs are. I find it very easy to stay under my calorie goals on the days when I avoid carbs.

    That's a good call, but it happens that I'm T2D & eat <40 g of carb per day.
    Too much protein can increase my blood glucose, so I eat a good deal of fat (keto).
  • WalkingAlong
    WalkingAlong Posts: 4,926 Member
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    The good thing about that route is you'd be eating at that level for the rest of your life, so it's great practice for maintenance. The bad news is it takes forever if you're close to goal, which you appear to be. If you do the math you'll see. Most people don't have the patience or the perfect logging skills and would rather just use a reasonable deficit to get to goal then practice maintenance.
  • Booda101
    Booda101 Posts: 161 Member
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    This site has something similar I think.


    http://calorieline.com/tools/tdee
  • hookilau
    hookilau Posts: 3,134 Member
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    This site has something similar I think.


    http://calorieline.com/tools/tdee

    :heart: Hey! Thanks for posting this site!

    It helped a great deal. According to the activity level that most closely matches me, at 45 yrs old and 5' tall, I need 1789 cal daily to maintain my goal weight of 110# (current weight is ~126#).

    I'm going to shave it down to 1700 cal daily (do-able for me) and I feel more confident I can keep going at this level :bigsmile:
    I love the idea that all I have to do is continue, and my maintenance & weight loss calories are the same level. :drinker:

    Thanks again everyone for your input!
  • GauchoMark
    GauchoMark Posts: 1,804 Member
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    I lost the first 40-50 lbs doing that. It works, however, the closer you get to your goal weight the slower the losses will come if you don't decrease the intake a little bit more.
  • hookilau
    hookilau Posts: 3,134 Member
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    The good thing about that route is you'd be eating at that level for the rest of your life, so it's great practice for maintenance. The bad news is it takes forever if you're close to goal, which you appear to be. If you do the math you'll see. Most people don't have the patience or the perfect logging skills and would rather just use a reasonable deficit to get to goal then practice maintenance.

    Interesting point. I think that'll work for me! I like the idea of not 'dieting' anymore & eating at a baseline level.
    The site booda posted explained stuff in a way that suits me well, I think. Looking for just the right tweak to make this less of a mystery to continue.

    I think I've got dieter's fatigue :tongue:
  • hookilau
    hookilau Posts: 3,134 Member
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    I lost the first 40-50 lbs doing that. It works, however, the closer you get to your goal weight the slower the losses will come if you don't decrease the intake a little bit more.

    duh :laugh: re-read your answer & that's interesting as well. How much did you wind up increasing? If you don't mind, what were your stats & the metrics you ended up using?

    edited cause reading comprehension sucks sometimes :laugh:
  • GauchoMark
    GauchoMark Posts: 1,804 Member
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    So, I started out at about 305 lbs so my TDEE was somewhere around 3200 calories a day. I thought I wanted to weigh around 220 lbs, so I re-ran the calculation for maintenance and saw that I should maintain 220 lbs with about 2500 calories. So, that is what I ate until I got down to about 250ish lbs. Initially I was working with a deficit of ~700 calories a day doing that.

    The problem with that lies with once your weight drops, your deficit drops too. Using my example, once my weight got down into the 250 lb range, my maintenance was about 2750 calories a day, so my deficit was ~250 calories per day. This is a pretty slow weight loss rate for still being so overweight. So, I just changed to a flat 500 calorie/day deficit for the remainder of the weight loss.
  • hookilau
    hookilau Posts: 3,134 Member
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    So, I started out at about 305 lbs so my TDEE was somewhere around 3200 calories a day. I thought I wanted to weigh around 220 lbs, so I re-ran the calculation for maintenance and saw that I should maintain 220 lbs with about 2500 calories. So, that is what I ate until I got down to about 250ish lbs. Initially I was working with a deficit of ~700 calories a day doing that.

    The problem with that lies with once your weight drops, your deficit drops too. Using my example, once my weight got down into the 250 lb range, my maintenance was about 2750 calories a day, so my deficit was ~250 calories per day. This is a pretty slow weight loss rate for still being so overweight. So, I just changed to a flat 500 calorie/day deficit for the remainder of the weight loss.

    ahhh...now I understand what you mean :wink: thanks for explaining.
    In my case, after 110#'s there's not much more weight I can lose :laugh: Thanks for helping me work this out, I guess I need to evaluate my goals.

    It's body fat I want to get rid of but not at the expense of LBM.

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