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When to start upping calories to ease into maintenance?

pandorakick
pandorakick Posts: 901 Member
edited December 2024 in Health and Weight Loss
Last 2 months I've lost 4 kg and have also been working on toning up. With an average loss of about half a kg per week / 2 kg per month I'm still about 3.5 to 4 months away from my goal weight / size. I was thinking of how and when to start upping my calorie goal to gradually ease into maintenance. From what I read, it's a good idea to increase calories with about 50 per week or 100 per 2 weeks until maintenance amount has been reached. But when to start increasing?
When goal weight had been reached? 2 kg from goal weight? More?

I would really love to hear about your experiences with this!

Replies

  • happyfeetrebel1
    happyfeetrebel1 Posts: 1,005 Member
    I'm sure you'll get general opinions that differ from person to person, but I am around 10-15 lbs from goal. I don't plan to go into 'maintenance' until I get there.

    And yes, I'll start with about 100 more per day if I can :)
  • yarwell
    yarwell Posts: 10,477 Member
    http://www.3fatchicks.com/how-to-maintain-your-weight-after-reaching-your-goal-weight/ advocates waiting one week after hitting target then adjusting by 250 calories.

    Overfeeding by 1000 calories a day for 28 days might add about 6 lbs in weight / 1% bodyfat ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22586466 ) so it isn't that sensitive.
  • Healthy_4_Life2
    Healthy_4_Life2 Posts: 595 Member
    Bump. Will like to know too.
  • pandorakick
    pandorakick Posts: 901 Member
    I'm sure you'll get general opinions that differ from person to person, but I am around 10-15 lbs from goal. I don't plan to go into 'maintenance' until I get there.

    And yes, I'll start with about 100 more per day if I can :)
    Thank you for your reaction! And yes, I meant to write "increasing with 50 calories per day for a period of 1 week /100 calories per day for a period of 2 weeks before increasing again". :flowerforyou:
  • pandorakick
    pandorakick Posts: 901 Member
    http://www.3fatchicks.com/how-to-maintain-your-weight-after-reaching-your-goal-weight/ advocates waiting one week after hitting target then adjusting by 250 calories.

    Overfeeding by 1000 calories a day for 28 days might add about 6 lbs in weight / 1% bodyfat ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22586466 ) so it isn't that sensitive.
    Thank you for the links, off to read!
  • Oishii
    Oishii Posts: 2,675 Member
    I lost waaaay too fast using mfp's recommended calories (over 1kg a week when I only had 5kg to lose) so I upped my calories via increasing my activity level setting. Stupidly I didn't realise this meant that my maintenance calories would also be higher than mfp predicted, so when I reached goal and tried to maintain, I kept losing. I went below a weight I was comfortable with and had to gain.

    As you are losing at a reasonable pace, I'd say it depends on whether you would mind going below your goal weight. If not, you may as well start upping with 1kg to go, or even when you get there. If you wouldn't want to go below your goal weight, I'd start upping with 2kg or more still to go.

    Another factor is how hungry you feel. I never ever want to lose weight fast again. If I want to lose now I just follow my fitbit maintenance calories, which will gradually lead to weight loss for me.
  • pandorakick
    pandorakick Posts: 901 Member
    I lost waaaay too fast using mfp's recommended calories (over 1kg a week when I only had 5kg to lose) so I upped my calories via increasing my activity level setting. Stupidly I didn't realise this meant that my maintenance calories would also be higher than mfp predicted, so when I reached goal and tried to maintain, I kept losing. I went below a weight I was comfortable with and had to gain.

    As you are losing at a reasonable pace, I'd say it depends on whether you would mind going below your goal weight. If not, you may as well start upping with 1kg to go, or even when you get there. If you wouldn't want to go below your goal weight, I'd start upping with 2kg or more still to go.

    Another factor is how hungry you feel. I never ever want to lose weight fast again. If I want to lose now I just follow my fitbit maintenance calories, which will gradually lead to weight loss for me.
    Any weight between 55 and 60 kg would be fine with me as long as I fit into my size 36 (US 6) pants again. To tell the truth, I hadn't stepped on a scale and maintaining for years before I started on MFP. The only reason I'm weighing now is just because it makes tracking through this site a bit easier. It truly is the goal size I'm after, not the number of kg's on a scale.

    With my current daily calorie goal of 1420 (additional calories from excercise excluded) I don't feel hungry at all. I try to eat back most of my excercise calories but find I have to resort to high calorie food stuffs like nuts and peanutbutter knäckebröd to fill up the gaps. It will be interesting to see how that will work out with even more calories to eat!

    Based on your input I think starting with upping with about 1 kg to go sounds about right. Thank you for your reaction!
  • robin52077
    robin52077 Posts: 4,383 Member
    IMO you should wait until you are in a healthy weight range, not considered overweight, and the remaining pounds are technically "vanity" pounds, then start slowly adding calories (100 a day for each week sounds good), you will strip off the last few vanity pounds while increasing and by the time you reach your goal, you will be used to eating at a higher level and don't have to make a drastic change all at once.
  • LorinaLynn
    LorinaLynn Posts: 13,247 Member
    Depends on what your weekly goal is set to.

    For me, I switched from 1 pound a week to a half pound a week when I was within 10 pounds (a little under 5kg) from my goal. That gave me 250 more calories. I didn't automatically switch to maintenance, though. Instead, I kept eating a little below maintenance, but only logged Monday through Friday, to give myself more wiggle room on weekends.

    I also like the suggestion on some sites - like Fat2FitRadio - http://www.fat2fitradio.com/tools/bmr/ - to eat what your maintenance at goal weight will be, and you'll gradually get to that weight.
  • pandorakick
    pandorakick Posts: 901 Member
    Robin52077 and LorinaLynn: Thank you both for your points of view! It is very enlightening to read about the various possible approaches.
  • deaddivya
    deaddivya Posts: 102
    Bump to read later.
This discussion has been closed.

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