Maintenance Diet

aviduser

I read an article yesterday in the most recent issue of Bicycling Magazine that said something very interesting about the maintenance diet.

On average, one needs 10 fewer calories per pound lost once the goal weight is reached. In other words, lose 10 lbs, and you need to reduce your maintenance diet intake by 100 calories per day. For me, this means that I need 450 fewer calories than someone who has been consistently 175 lbs without any big gain (my max was 220 or so).

This is something that the BMR calculator on MFP DOES NOT ACCOUNT FOR. This is borne out by my experience--the amount of calories that MFP allows after you reach your target weight is generally a little too high. Further, you may have read about the studies that show that one's metabolism slows after you lose more than 10% of body weight, which makes it harder to keep the weight off.

Of course, maintaining a high level of activity is also a critical key to keeping the weight off.

Anyway for those of you who are working on keeping the weight off, this provides some food for thought (no pun intended).

Cheers!

Glucocorticoid

Wait so the MFP recommendations are wrong? I am appalled!

itamd1970

The new york times recently had a whole big piece about the science surrounding this. My experience also suggests that you may want to also reduce some of your caloric intake (about 5%) the older you get. So for equal weight, a 40 yo would need 5% fewer calories than a 30 yo.