Maintenance

found out what your TDEE is, and always eat back your calories of course

Let MFP recalculcate your cals to maintain your goal weight.

You basically do the opposite of what you did when you began your cutting phase.

Here is an example: My maintenance before I cut was around 2500 calories which included: 30 minutes of weight training 5 days a week and walking for 12 minutes twice a week. To lean down, I created a daily deficit of 500 calories from calorie restriction (-200) and increased cardio (+300). Thus my gross caloric intake was 2300 to cut body fat. I only had a small amount of body fat to lose, thus a modest deficit.

To return to maintenance: I figured out my lean body mass after I stopped leaning down - it was pretty much the same as I managed to minimize lean muscle loss during dieting to nearly 0. Knowing that my maintenance calories was going to be nearly the same, I slowly increased my calories over the course of 3 weeks to make up for the 500 calorie deficit. During this time I gained a few lbs of temporary water weight - so do not be shocked and think you are gaining fat. Think logically.

So i increased my calories by 200 over a 3 week period and curtailed my cardio immediately to only twice a week for 12 minutes - just like I did during my previous maintenance.

The larger the deficit, the more patient you should be in upping calories towards maintenance. If your lean body mass lowered, keep that in mind since your new maintenance calorie range will be less - thus, up slowly and monitor measurements and body composition to ensure you can maintain without gains (excluding water) for two weeks.