Feeling Trapped at Maintenance

Have you averaged your total calorie daily intake over the past two months or so? Being on the smaller side myself (5'1" and 100 lbs), I switched to TDEE using this calculation because I found myself in this abysmal cycle of trying to do more cardio just so that I could eat more. I got burnt out--even of doing things that I enjoyed--and I stalled on my lifts. I had a mental block in increasing my calories, but it helped to do it slowly.

Averaging your daily calorie intake over a month or more it should account for week-to-week variations in activity.

I have the exact same problem. I'm going to increase my calories to my mainteinance level soon (I have to lose another 3 kgs) and I should be eating around 1800 kcals considering what most online calculators and MFP say. But I don't know how correct these sites can be... I think you should try to increase your calories until you see a gain. The higher amount of calories that doesn't make you gain will work fine as manteinance. Also, don't underestimate your activity level, I try to never rely on it, but you should always consider your workouts, walking etc.

No. How would I go about Doing that?

You mean, find the average of your total daily calories? I went back over 2 month's worth of total daily calories and put them in an Excel spreadsheet and used the "average" function (but I'm sure a calculator works too).

Or do you mean increasing calories gradually? Pick a number you are comfortable with (100 seems like a good one) and add that to your calories allowance (Goals -> Change Goals -> Customize -> Custom -> Enter calorie goal there.

I am 4 feet and 11.5 inches and my present weight is 102 lbs, and I have been on maintenance for almost 3 years. MFP maintenance calories, confirmed by other sites, are 1430 and I average/net between 1400 and 1450. I am much older than all of you, so I don’t require a lot of calories so survive and I am still trying to have small deficit because I want to lose more body fat.

My BMR is 1045 and TDEE 1621; however my workouts do not burn lots of calories since I mostly do strength training and not too much cardio. I do eat most of my exercise calories back and my gross intake is between 1550 and 1600 calories sometimes a little bit more, except during the weekends which are my rest days. I have no problems eating within my set goals or even going above some days. If I am hungry, I eat more if I am not then I stay within my calories, but I do try to reach my macros of 40/30/30, specially my daily protein goal.

It will be interesting to see what happens in the next 4 to 6 weeks because I am having arthroscopic knee surgery tomorrow and I will not be allowed to exercise as I am used to, for several weeks. I will be very sedentary for a while so I may need to adjust my calories downward.

I did have to tweet the calories a little bit because I started to lose weight again, and that is not what I wanted. OP don’t be afraid to eat some more and see what happens to your weight; if it goes up you either exercise more or eat less but do understand that nothing is in a steady state and weight fluctuations are normal, especially when you are young.

I meant if I'm adding 100 calories a week, do I slowly wean down exercise logging or just get rid of it.

I'm still so nervous because I'm not losing at 1400-1446 calories I'm afraid of gaining at 1700

We know it takes approximately 3,500 calories over our true maintenance calorie allotment, to gain 1 actual pound. If you're adding a 100 calories a day, for a week and then adding another 100 calories in week two etc etc, when you're most likely UNDER your maintenance calories yet, it's pretty much impossible for you to gain actual poundage here The scale may fluctuate a bit at first, but that's normal. I actually lost a couple extra pounds as I transitioned into the higher calories, which is why I'm now below 120lbs and maintaining that-wasn't my goal weight, but yet here I am

Transitioning into maintenance is all about experimenting and pushing the limits, to see how far you can actually go.

How do I know what's a gain and what's a fluctuation?
I already am between 106-110lbs on any given day when I weigh myself every morning.

For me, it just took time to learn my body's natural fluctuations. I know a higher sodium meal the day before will cause a 'gain', tom will cause a 'gain', if I don't drink enough water, I 'gain' etc. but none of this is actual weight gain. I've been charting my daily weigh ins for a while now and it's actually pretty cool to see how my body works

I also stack my calories to have more for weekends (eat a little under maintenance calories during the week). I always weigh at the high end of my maintenance range on Monday and I weigh my lowest on Fridays. Because of this pattern I always count Friday's weigh in as my official one and that's the one I go by, in terms of a real gain (if I was above the high point of my maintenance range on a Friday I would do a correction, because that would be totally out of character of my weight pattern. So far, I've only had to do this once since I've been in maintenance).