Transition From Losing to Maintaining

patrox247

Hey guys, I am a 6'2" male who weighed 320 lbs in January. I have lost over 140 lbs over the last 11 months thanks to calorie counting with the MFP phone app. I lost all this weight without exercise, simply by sticking to the MFP calorie counting religiously. So here is the deal...I am around 175 lbs now and only have around 10 lbs or so of fat to lose. I have started working out this week with a beginners Jillian Michaels video and I have also started bike riding. So up until now I have been losing around 2.5 lbs a week with MFP just by using the app and watching my calorie intake. Is it a good idea to increase my calories so that I can slow down my weight loss and transition into weight maintenance? I want to be smart about this transition because I saw the shocking failure statistics about maintaining weight and I want to make sure I am not part of the 85-90% that gain all the weight back within 3 years. Any advice about this? I currently eat 1250 calories a day on non-workout days and 1600 on work out days. I am losing over 2 lbs a week like this. Is it smart to slow down weight loss and ease into maintenance?

dawlschic007

First of all, congrats on your weight loss! It would probably be a good idea to slow down your weight loss a bit to about 0.5 pound per week since you are so close to goal. You may want to look into finding out what your maintenance calories would be for your goal weight and slowly up your calories to that. This website has a excellent tool to help you figure out your calorie intake: http://www.fat2fitradio.com/tools/bmr/.

By eating at your goal weight maintenance, you are still eating a deficit to lose weight now but it also teaches you how to eat properly to keep the goal weight you want. I would recommend slowly upping your calories about 100 calories per week (i.e. 1700 calories for week 1, 1800 for week 2, etc.) until you are at your recommended calorie intake. You also may notice a slight increase on the scale when you up your calories, but do not worry about this as it is normal and will go away once your body stabilizes itself to the higher calorie intake.

patrox247

Thanks for the good advice! Do you guys find that it is harder to maintain than it is to lose weight?

pwittek10

That is a big
YES!
It is very hard!

katevarner

I think maintenance is harder psychologically, particularly if you have been eating at a deficit for a long time, but it must be done. Just work yourself up to it gradually and only exercise if you are going to keep exercising. I gained the weight back last time because I quit exercising, not because I started overeating. That came much later.

sc1572

A few weeks back, I switched from .5 lb/week loss to maintaining. My cals, before exercise, went from 1,440-1,640. I tried this for awhile, but then realized that some days I am not that hungry, and other days am hungrier than others. Plus, I've been changing up my workout routine, because of injury/overtraining, and some days burn more/work harder than others. Instead, I found that I am in a range each day, normally about 1,400-1,800 calories, and have been fluctuating between 114-117, which is fine with me.

Poorgirls_Diet

well done for losing so much in such a short time. That is what I want to do as well. Sorry I can't help or say anything with regards to maintaining but I know when I reach to near goal I would like to slow it down to maybe .5lb a week. Hope you get someone better to offer advice. Any chance of some pics though for thinspiration?

kuger4119

I dropped 27 lbs and switched to a maintenance diet. Even with the days that I cheated I was hanging within a pound of my original goal. Since then, I decided to gain 10 lbs while hitting the gym hard to try and do a bulk and cut. I was surprised at how hard it was too feel ok about eating enough calories to gain a pound a week. I'm on my way back down now and I'm very pleased with how easy it's been to get my weight to shed when I want it to.

If you aren't wild about counting calories every day for the rest of your life, it would be a good idea to start to transition to a more normal diet as someone suggested....100 calories more per day and bumping that up once a week.

pg3ibew

I have been maintaining for about 3 months. It is difficult to do. Plus I exercise alot.

I upped my calories slowly. Kept my exercise the same. Some weeks I would gian a pound. Others, lose a pound. I find that I basically eat the same as when I was dieting. Maybe an extra few ounces of Beef, pork, chicken, plus an extra snack or two. Nothing too drastic. And when the bride and I go out to eat, I splurge a bit more. Seems to be working for me.

geekyjock76

Congrats on doing so well with diet alone.

You should start decreasing the deficit so that you are only losing about 0.5 lb per week. There is a problem you may face, however, when you up back to maintenance due to adhering to a very large deficit of 50% or more.

Maintaining unnecessarily large deficits - greater than the amount of fat mass you have - lead to greater loss in lean body mass. As you decrease the deficit, you will regain very little of the lost lean body mass. Thus, if you gain back weight, it will be due to a disproportionate amount of fat. How much fat mass you gain back depends on two determining factors: Starting body fat percentage and RMR at time of upping calories (how depressed is it and how long it takes to increase vs increase in caloric intake). Unfortunately, since you maintained a steep deficit for quite some time, you may gain back a fair amount of fat when decreasing the deficit to where you are losing 0.5 lbs per week. People who initially had high body fat percentages gain a very large amount of fat mass relative to lean body mass while their RMR hasn't had a chance to rebound when assuming 50% deficits.

Although you accomplished this without exercise, it is absolutely important to include it when maintaining body weight.

When I get back home, I will include the study which delved in to the issue of disproportionate fat gain relative to lean body mass during weight recovery following a VLCD.

patrox247

Thanks for the great replies guys! Knowledge is power.

I wish I would have started exercise a long time ago but there is no sense in beating myself up over something I can't do anything about. So will a good exercise program help me avoid regaining fat?