Any tips would be super helpful!

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JayLeitao
JayLeitao Posts: 13 Member
in Goal: Maintaining Weight
Hey everyone,
I live a very active life, love to exercise, pretty bad at eating (heavily under-eat) which I'm trying to sort out, but I naturally lost five kilos in the past few months just from my lifestyle. So now I've hit my ideal weight, and I'm wondering what tweaks I need to make in order to maintain. I've never done maintenance before and I know with my current lifestyle I'll just keep losing weight, so I'd just like any tips or help that I can get with how to stay at my weight now! I'm scared that if I try to start eating well, my body will go into shock and the whole thing will be undone. I usually have a very hard time not eating at a huge deficit; my total intake can be anywhere from 300 cals to 800 cals, but I find it very hard to go over 900. I know this is horribly unhealthy and I've been working alongside a therapist for a long time to get it to change. I'm worried if I start hitting 1,200 minimum all of a sudden my body's going to suffer from it.

Thanks!!

Replies

  • BurnWithBarn2015
    BurnWithBarn2015 Posts: 1,026 Member
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    i would get some professional help to work on the under eating part


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  • JayLeitao
    JayLeitao Posts: 13 Member
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    BurnWithBarn2015 wrote: »
    i would get some professional help to work on the under eating part

    Thanks, as I mentioned, I have been. :) But otherwise I'd like to know what are like the main steps to maintenance.
  • Phrick
    Phrick Posts: 2,765 Member
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    Maintaining your weight happens when you eat the same number of calories as you burn. So... significantly more than you have been. And the first thing you'll have to face is that when you move your calories up, even to something as low as 1200 (which is well well below what maintenance should be for someone of your age/height/weight), you will experience water weigh that will reflect on the scale as a "gain" even though it is not fat - my very basic understanding of this is because when you diet, you become depleted of glycogen on a cellular level, and when you add food (whether that's overeating one day or moving your calories up on a more permanent basis), those glycogen stores replenish by storing water. It's not fat but it freaks people out regularly, most people don't understand how it works... I don't even really "get it" completely but there are a ton of people on MFP who are more knowledgable about it and will hopefully come along to correct / add to what I've said. There are ways to mitigate that gain or make it less noticeable however I won't share them because I don't believe that to be in your best interest because you are underrating so severely now and have been for so long. Better to get yourself to the minimum healthy intake of 1200, water gain be damned.

    And if you can't accept that there will be water gain, and let go of the fear of it, then I'd like to gently suggest that merely working with a therapist may not be enough. More targeted, aggressive treatment of your eating disorder may be the wisest course.
  • jacklifts
    jacklifts Posts: 396 Member
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    check out this lady. you can try to do it her way:

    http://www.themacroexperiment.com/about.html
  • EvgeniZyntx
    EvgeniZyntx Posts: 24,208 Member
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    Why do you worry that your body is going to suffer from it? What is your logic in that or is it a vague sense of dread?

    You need to examine that in depth. Your body won't go into shock from proper nutrition. At worst, you'll gain a kilo from water weight related to providing your muscles with proper nutrients. Your skin and health will be better over time by assuring correct minimum nutrition.
  • middlehaitch
    middlehaitch Posts: 8,487 Member
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    Share this app with your therapist so you can be guided correctly.

    Put your stats in to maintain and start logging. Just logging what you are eating. Once you have the weighing, use a digital scale, and measuring of food and liquids sorted start upping your calories by 100 a day each week. So week 1, 900, week 2, 1000, week 3, 1100, week 6, 1400, and so on so that you are eating your maintenance calories eventually.

    With the amount of exercise you do you should be eating back 50-75% of those calories.

    You could also track your calories with the exercise burn included. The calculator below, or the TDEE calculator at fitnessfrog.com will help you sort that out.

    Cheers, h.


    https://healthyeater.com/flexible-dieting-calculator
  • Yi5hedr3
    Yi5hedr3 Posts: 2,696 Member
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    Increase calories VERY SLOWLY or your body may start hoarding. 50 calories per day, and maintain a week, then add another 50 cals/day and maintain a week....repeat.
  • ashleyylo
    ashleyylo Posts: 101 Member
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    In my opinion, since you are working with a therapist alresdy, see if they would be willing to work with you on a meal plan that slowly increases you calories by 100 or so a week until you are at maintenance level calories. There is a real thing called refeeding syndrome that happens after a prolonged period of starvation and sudden reintroduction of a regular amount of food.

    Good luck! The work is hard, physically and mentally, but you can do it!

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