What has been your biggest struggle at maintenance?
desiresdestiny
Posts: 175 Member
I was curious as we all can struggle differently at maintenance. Mine so far as been figuring out maintenance and eating at maintenance. I'm sure I've struggled with other things, can't think of anymore right now.
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Replies
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I really haven't struggled with anything...I've been maintaining for over 2.5 years without logging.
if you know your average rate of loss, all you really need to do is work the math to figure out what your maintenance is. so if you were losing about 1 Lb per week as a general trend then you know you need to eat about 500 calories more per day to maintain.
it is also helpful to understand that maintenance isn't a static number, you're going to have fluctuations in weight. to a similar end, your maintenance calories aren't static...nobody has a TDEE of exactly XXXX calories...basically, you have a range of calories for which you will maintain.0 -
I'm loving maintenance these days
took me a while to get my numbers right but with that came a confidence that I could stay this weight longterm 0 -
cwolfman13 wrote: »I really haven't struggled with anything...I've been maintaining for over 2.5 years without logging.
if you know your average rate of loss, all you really need to do is work the math to figure out what your maintenance is. so if you were losing about 1 Lb per week as a general trend then you know you need to eat about 500 calories more per day to maintain.
it is also helpful to understand that maintenance isn't a static number, you're going to have fluctuations in weight. to a similar end, your maintenance calories aren't static...nobody has a TDEE of exactly XXXX calories...basically, you have a range of calories for which you will maintain.
I think I've figured out my TDEE range and yes I have a weight range not a number. It took me a while because I wasn't calories counting when I was losing weight as I just became more mindful of my eating and then I got sick and lost more weight. I joined MFP to actually maintain.0 -
RunRutheeRun wrote: »I'm loving maintenance these days took me a while to get my numbers right but with that came a confidence that I could stay this weight longterm
Totally agree.. I can def see this being long term.0 -
Hormones and more generally, hunger. WAY hungrier since I got close to my goal.0
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I've been maintaining my goal weight for a little over 6 months now, and my biggest struggle is staying satisfied food-wise throughout the day. The past couple of months it seems my appetite has been ferocious. Nevertheless, I have still been consistently logging, exercising, and weighing/measuring everything. I'm enjoying being at goal, and that makes my little struggle with hunger well worth it!0
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I've been maintaining several years. It has been pretty straightforward. My biggest struggle is trusting my body when it's cold to tell me I really AM hungry because I'm really burning a lot more calories than normal, even though my exercise doesn't register it. And to trust my log when it tells me I really HAVEN'T eaten enough even though I'm not hungry, and maybe that's why I'm grumpy.
So trusting both heart and head and keeping them balanced.0 -
Laughter_Girl wrote: »I've been maintaining my goal weight for a little over 6 months now, and my biggest struggle is staying satisfied food-wise throughout the day. The past couple of months it seems my appetite has been ferocious. Nevertheless, I have still been consistently logging, exercising, and weighing/measuring everything. I'm enjoying being at goal, and that makes my little struggle with hunger well worth it!
This! Feeling hungry when you are losing is fine, not like it is forever.
But I still feel hungry at maintenance, I have increased fat and protein which helps some but not enough. It is hard to resist having more food when you don't even feel satiated.0 -
holidays!0
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Laughter_Girl wrote: »I've been maintaining my goal weight for a little over 6 months now, and my biggest struggle is staying satisfied food-wise throughout the day. The past couple of months it seems my appetite has been ferocious. Nevertheless, I have still been consistently logging, exercising, and weighing/measuring everything. I'm enjoying being at goal, and that makes my little struggle with hunger well worth it!
This! Feeling hungry when you are losing is fine, not like it is forever.
But I still feel hungry at maintenance, I have increased fat and protein which helps some but not enough. It is hard to resist having more food when you don't even feel satiated.
Glad to see it's not just me. When I was losing everyone was saying that it will be easier to maintain because you have more calories. What nobody told me was that I'd be hungrier and that I have to be MORE careful with what I eat now than when I was losing...0 -
My biggest struggle has been not falling back to old habits of overeating during times of stress and often simply because food tastes good, and I'm still working on moderation. I overate most of my life (beginning in childhood), and was obese until age 50. So those habits are difficult to change, and it's a daily struggle to stay on track.0
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I stopped tracking a few months into maintenance, I just plan/log in a spreadsheet now. My biggest struggle has been the sliding into eating a little too much, even though I still eat healthy food. First I planned for too many meals. Turns out I can't eat to complete satiety five times a day, and keep the weight off
Then I miscalculated mindlessly and upped my portions too much. Now I'm having a monster craving for grains, and they are truly calorie dense. I have to rearrange my whole meal plan to accomodate for more bread, porridge and cereal. 0 -
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Laughter_Girl wrote: »
What made me hungrier at the beginning of maintenance was eating too many refined carbs. And every time I get hungry and start going over calories it's the same thing.0 -
Laughter_Girl wrote: »
What made me hungrier at the beginning of maintenance was eating too many refined carbs. And every time I get hungry and start going over calories it's the same thing.
I think this is my issue now. I have to get in more whole grain. As long as grains played a minor part in my diet it didn't matter; now I have to pay more attention to their nutritional quality.0 -
Thanks for sharing your tips & experience. I'm still 35 lbs away from maintenance but I think about it a lot because I have failed miserably at it on the past.0
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Laughter_Girl wrote: »
What made me hungrier at the beginning of maintenance was eating too many refined carbs. And every time I get hungry and start going over calories it's the same thing.
The problem though is that I'm not eating more refined carbs than I was when I was losing, and I'm still hungrier, even with more calories. It's just odd.0 -
Getting enough protein for recomp 0
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Laughter_Girl wrote: »
What made me hungrier at the beginning of maintenance was eating too many refined carbs. And every time I get hungry and start going over calories it's the same thing.
The problem though is that I'm not eating more refined carbs than I was when I was losing, and I'm still hungrier, even with more calories. It's just odd.
I find the same - but I have 2000 calories on a sedentary setting and find that after the day is gone I gain about 800 calories to eat so I don't get crazy over it. As long as most of the time I'm eating at maintenance or close to I don't fret.
My main issue is milk - I LOVE milk and have a lot of it so I try to cut back (says he after having milk and shreddies in a small cup).
I also find that if I eat little but often I don't feel as hungry as normal - oh and a lot of soda water.0 -
Laughter_Girl wrote: »
I would suggest you haven't found your optimum maintenance cals. There is usually a ~500 cal range that your body can adjust for. If you are at the low end your body will easily get cold your hair and nails won't grow as fast and other non essential fictions your body would normally do are reduced to conserve energy.
The best way to truly find your high end maintenance is to add 100 cals to your daily intake every 2 weeks till you see a gain on the scale.
Remember you will have a glycogen weight gain of ~3-5#'s but this is just your body returning to normal fiction.
I remember the first time I tried to bulk. I was maintaining on~1900 for 6monthd so upped to 2150 to gain 1/4 a week. 3 weeks went by and I had lost a lb. I upped it again 2500 and maintained my weight for the next month. I added again to 2750 and gained 1/2 lb over the next month. I finally hit 2900 to gain ~1/4lb a week.
From 1900-2150 I did gain 6lbs of glycogen weight the first week before I started losing, but my measurements didn't change and my clothes didn't feel any tighter.0 -
Like some have said, I had the similar experience of feeling hungry at the pit of my stomach about 3 days out of the week while trying to maintain my weight. I've been trying things I've tried before, though inconsistently then, like increasing fat and protein intake. For instance, instead of brown rice with skinless chicken breast for dinner, I have the brown rice with chicken whole leg (skin included). This makes for more satiety.
Breakfast is also a key target for me these days in controlling feelings of hunger. Rather than making it a high sugar meal, I cook a half cup of oatmeal and have it with 2 tablespoons of peanut butter and a dash of cinnamon instead. Far more satisfying than most breakfasts I've had in a while.
Incidentally, my weight still fluctuates, going from about 3 pounds over to 2 pounds under my target weight.0 -
rtp_slg52181 wrote: »Laughter_Girl wrote: »
I would suggest you haven't found your optimum maintenance cals. There is usually a ~500 cal range that your body can adjust for. If you are at the low end your body will easily get cold your hair and nails won't grow as fast and other non essential fictions your body would normally do are reduced to conserve energy.
Well, I don't know. It took me 2 months to lose the 2 pounds I gained on vacations (assuming it was real weight gain as I ate too much and pee'd every 30 minutes on the way back), so you'd think I would have a deficit, but the scale hasn't gone lower than 133 pounds in 18 months.
I zigzag my calories though so it might have something to do with it, but there are days when I'm actually not that hungry, and some when I'm starving, and I always eat too much during PMS (up to 3500 extra calories sometimes) so I have to make up for that somehow, so I try to keep a 800-2000 calorie deficit the other weeks. But if I was eating too little, I'd still be losing, and I'm definitely not.
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rtp_slg52181 wrote: »Laughter_Girl wrote: »
I would suggest you haven't found your optimum maintenance cals. There is usually a ~500 cal range that your body can adjust for. If you are at the low end your body will easily get cold your hair and nails won't grow as fast and other non essential fictions your body would normally do are reduced to conserve energy.
Well, I don't know. It took me 2 months to lose the 2 pounds I gained on vacations (assuming it was real weight gain as I ate too much and pee'd every 30 minutes on the way back), so you'd think I would have a deficit, but the scale hasn't gone lower than 133 pounds in 18 months.
I zigzag my calories though so it might have something to do with it, but there are days when I'm actually not that hungry, and some when I'm starving, and I always eat too much during PMS (up to 3500 extra calories sometimes) so I have to make up for that somehow, so I try to keep a 800-2000 calorie deficit the other weeks. But if I was eating too little, I'd still be losing, and I'm definitely not.
Something I have experienced before is that when I don't eat enough I don't lose weight - if I do that constantly my body adapts to the low intake and I stop losing. I found that out going for recomp and trying eat more 2 weigh less0 -
rtp_slg52181 wrote: »Laughter_Girl wrote: »
I would suggest you haven't found your optimum maintenance cals. There is usually a ~500 cal range that your body can adjust for. If you are at the low end your body will easily get cold your hair and nails won't grow as fast and other non essential fictions your body would normally do are reduced to conserve energy.
Well, I don't know. It took me 2 months to lose the 2 pounds I gained on vacations (assuming it was real weight gain as I ate too much and pee'd every 30 minutes on the way back), so you'd think I would have a deficit, but the scale hasn't gone lower than 133 pounds in 18 months.
I zigzag my calories though so it might have something to do with it, but there are days when I'm actually not that hungry, and some when I'm starving, and I always eat too much during PMS (up to 3500 extra calories sometimes) so I have to make up for that somehow, so I try to keep a 800-2000 calorie deficit the other weeks. But if I was eating too little, I'd still be losing, and I'm definitely not.
It's because you haven't let your body
gain the ~3-5 lbs of glycogen weight it needs to switch out of actively conserving energy
After you let this gain happen you'll be surprised how much you can eat and maintain weight.
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It's because you haven't let your body
gain the ~3-5 lbs of glycogen weight it needs to switch out of actively conserving energy
After you let this gain happen you'll be surprised how much you can eat and maintain weight.
Yeah I agree - I think the biggest lesson I had was when trying to bulk. I was eating SO much and still could hardly put on any weight. I took me about 4 months to gain 2 kg and I was constantly worrying that I'd balloon and wake up with all my weight loss efforts lost the next day. It ends up that I got frustrated with it and gave up. It takes too much and I constantly felt like I was binging.0 -
rtp_slg52181 wrote: »rtp_slg52181 wrote: »Laughter_Girl wrote: »
I would suggest you haven't found your optimum maintenance cals. There is usually a ~500 cal range that your body can adjust for. If you are at the low end your body will easily get cold your hair and nails won't grow as fast and other non essential fictions your body would normally do are reduced to conserve energy.
Well, I don't know. It took me 2 months to lose the 2 pounds I gained on vacations (assuming it was real weight gain as I ate too much and pee'd every 30 minutes on the way back), so you'd think I would have a deficit, but the scale hasn't gone lower than 133 pounds in 18 months.
I zigzag my calories though so it might have something to do with it, but there are days when I'm actually not that hungry, and some when I'm starving, and I always eat too much during PMS (up to 3500 extra calories sometimes) so I have to make up for that somehow, so I try to keep a 800-2000 calorie deficit the other weeks. But if I was eating too little, I'd still be losing, and I'm definitely not.
It's because you haven't let your body
gain the ~3-5 lbs of glycogen weight it needs to switch out of actively conserving energy
After you let this gain happen you'll be surprised how much you can eat and maintain weight.
But I went on vacations twice since, eating at maintenance or over it for 7-10 days, and I have 3000-4000 calorie days at least every other month. Surely I would have gained that glycogen weight then? I'm not constantly at a deficit and eat at maintenance or over at least twice a week too...0 -
I really enjoy regularly eating large quantities of certain high calorie foods - far more than I could fit into my calorie / macro goals.
I had to accept that if I am going to maintain my weight loss then I can't eat like that any more.
I didn't mind watching what I ate whilst I was losing weight, because it was a temporary change - I thought once I had more calories I would be able to eat more. But its not enough calories for what i want.
It was a big step for me to accept that I cannot eat the foods that I want to eat, in the quantities that I want, as regularly as I want to, ever again.
It is a constant effort to control what I eat because what I would like to eat is way above my maintenance calories (not from hunger or because I miss any particular foods, just because I want to eat a lot).
I didn't expect maintaining to require so much effort. Or at least I found it hard to realistically see myself putting in that much effort for the rest of my life. It took me a while to deeply accept that this is what I will have to do in order to maintain my weight loss.
Controlling myself is still really hard. I am hoping it will get easier.
My determination not to gain the weight back is very strong, though.0 -
Menopause.
I lost weight, and kept doing what I was doing. (I didn't stop my "diet" when I hit my goal.) I just kept doing what I was doing...Maintaining was relatively easy for me until peri-menopause and then I found that the pounds crept on a little. I joined here, and watched things for a while... Now menopause has hit and I'm formulating a plan for that as well.
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totaldetermination wrote: »I really enjoy regularly eating large quantities of certain high calorie foods - far more than I could fit into my calorie / macro goals.
I had to accept that if I am going to maintain my weight loss then I can't eat like that any more.
I didn't mind watching what I ate whilst I was losing weight, because it was a temporary change - I thought once I had more calories I would be able to eat more. But its not enough calories for what i want.
It was a big step for me to accept that I cannot eat the foods that I want to eat, in the quantities that I want, as regularly as I want to, ever again.
It is a constant effort to control what I eat because what I would like to eat is way above my maintenance calories (not from hunger or because I miss any particular foods, just because I want to eat a lot).
I didn't expect maintaining to require so much effort. Or at least I found it hard to realistically see myself putting in that much effort for the rest of my life. It took me a while to deeply accept that this is what I will have to do in order to maintain my weight loss.
Controlling myself is still really hard. I am hoping it will get easier.
My determination not to gain the weight back is very strong, though.
I think it's about finding out what kind of a dieter you are. I'm a volume eater...I LIKE eating and I eat loads.
So I stick to vegetables because it'd harder to gain weight from vegetables than it'd be from eating rice and pasta. Being in maintenance however, means having room for maneuver. So if I spoil myself one day I just remember that I need 3500 calories extra to put a pound. Also, it took me months to slim down so it'd take months eating that badly to go back to the original stage. So, as long as you keep an eye on your weight you'll be fine. You're prepared now!
I think what I struggle the most is that some days...I could REALLY do with eating a packet of biscuits out of comfort. But here I am, eating a huge bowl of soup because...volume!0 -
rtp_slg52181 wrote: »rtp_slg52181 wrote: »Laughter_Girl wrote: »
I would suggest you haven't found your optimum maintenance cals. There is usually a ~500 cal range that your body can adjust for. If you are at the low end your body will easily get cold your hair and nails won't grow as fast and other non essential fictions your body would normally do are reduced to conserve energy.
Well, I don't know. It took me 2 months to lose the 2 pounds I gained on vacations (assuming it was real weight gain as I ate too much and pee'd every 30 minutes on the way back), so you'd think I would have a deficit, but the scale hasn't gone lower than 133 pounds in 18 months.
I zigzag my calories though so it might have something to do with it, but there are days when I'm actually not that hungry, and some when I'm starving, and I always eat too much during PMS (up to 3500 extra calories sometimes) so I have to make up for that somehow, so I try to keep a 800-2000 calorie deficit the other weeks. But if I was eating too little, I'd still be losing, and I'm definitely not.
It's because you haven't let your body
gain the ~3-5 lbs of glycogen weight it needs to switch out of actively conserving energy
After you let this gain happen you'll be surprised how much you can eat and maintain weight.
But I went on vacations twice since, eating at maintenance or over it for 7-10 days, and I have 3000-4000 calorie days at least every other month. Surely I would have gained that glycogen weight then? I'm not constantly at a deficit and eat at maintenance or over at least twice a week too...
What cal target did you eat to lose weight?
What was your goal or end weight?
What cal target do you average now?
What is your current average weight?
Answer those and I'll be able to guess if you have gained your glycogen weight.0
I definitely monitor my macros to try to meet my daily targets. Other than that, I just drink plenty of water and try to eat slower. 
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