Weight Loss at Maintenance

Flixie00

I graduated my journey into maintenance by upping my net daily calorie intake so that I was only on a 0.5 lb a week weight loss when I hit goal. I then upped my daily calorie goal to maintenance. I work out a lot, and I eat back my exercise calories.

This was 10 days ago, and although I am struggling to eat the additional calories (and eating too many treats), I have been hitting my calorie goal.

Yesterday, I jumped on the scales in my gym ahead of my official weigh in on Monday, and it looks like I have dropped a few more pounds.

Is this normal? will my weight loss settle at some point soon? should I be eating more?

lisab0864

I had a hard time adjusting to maintenance also -- ended up losing just over 10 pounds before leveling out (about 4 months later).. If it really concerns you - you might want to eat a little more but my guess is that it will level itself out...

TavistockToad

eat more!

my maintenance is about 200 cals above what MFP says my maintenance is.

up your cals by 100 a week until you stop losing.

Oishii

At my original goal weight, to maintain, I require over 800kcal more than mfp suggested, so obviously, I had to up my calories.

A lot depends on whether you are willing to lose any more. My goal weight was the lowest I was comfortable being, and another 10lb lost would not have been what I wanted.

STrooper

I think the answer is...it depends.

It looks like it depends upon how much and how fast you dropped the weight. It depends upon your ratio of cardio to strength training. It depends upon how much of a change you make to your exercise and eating patterns.

The couple of people I've talked with here and outside of MFP have indicated that an "overshoot" really isn't unusual. But these are people who became and remained very active durng and after reaching their goal. I know I haven't switched my MFP program over to maintenance (though my Fitbit program which monitors my activity and comunicates that to MFP automatically switched because it is calculating calorie intake requirements compared to activity and activity patterns to hit a target weight within a certain period of time. I leave a lot of calories "on the table" according to both Fitbit and MFP).

You will eventually establish a new equilibrium. The trick is keeping your body to going back to it's old mode of operation.

Flixie00

Thanks for the feed back, this maintenance lark is lot harder than everyone makes out.

I work out a lot, 6 days a week, up to 2 hours a day. Four days a week I do strength training, about 5-6 hours a week a mix of heavy lifting and interval training. I also do a lot of cardio, including a long run at the weekend. I truely love exercising, and in fact have to stop myself from doing more sometimes. I have no intention of letting up on the exercise.

Initially I had my goal weight set lower, but increased it to the top end of the ideal weight for my height. This was due to the amount of strength training I do resulting in my appearing much smaller than I am (does that make sense?). I can therefore still afford to lose more, but would rather not.

I will weigh in officially Monday, and will re-evaluate my calorie goal, upping my calories if required. I maybe need to look at the composition of my diet and try to eat more higher calorie healthy foods (ie. nuts) and try to cut down on the cr*p.

ps. I lost my weight over 16 months, starting off at 2 lb a week loss target, moving 1.5 lb a week at 70% total loss, 1 lb at 80% and 0.5 lb at 90%. As previously mentioned I eat back most of my exercise calories (I can't use a HRM so trust MFP on all but gym cardio calculations), and generally eat 5 meals a day plus snacks.