Anxiety about increasing healthy-food calories to maintain

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eyewire
eyewire Posts: 10 Member
in Goal: Maintaining Weight
I'm 10 lbs from my goal and I'm starting to think about maintenance. Whenever I've increased my caloric intake slightly, I seemed to fill it with junk food. I'm concerned that when I get into maintenance and need to go up 300-500 calories/day, how I will actually eat that much food. That's an extra meal for me right now.

What did you do to increase your intake with healthy foods? Fruit, veg, and many proteins are fairly low-cal, so how did you go from eating less to more?

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  • chonji4ever
    chonji4ever Posts: 120 Member
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    Sued0nim wrote: »
    Are you hitting your nutritional requirements in your current diet? Perhaps it's time to remove your concept of healthy and unhealthy foods and include whatever it is you like to eat to make a balanced and enjoyable diet

    300-500 calories is nothing

    A couple of glasses of wine, a bowl of ice cream, oil and cream in your main course, some nuts in front of the television or just larger portions of your "healthy, nutritious" current food...

    Remember maintenance is forever ... time to work out how to eat whatever you want over time in your calorie allowance

    This is exactly right!
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
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    Try to keep in mind that healthy / nutritious is not the same as low calorie.

    Easiest way to gain some calories is to substitute any "diet foods" you may currently be eating for their full calorie equivalent.

    But there's loads of options from slowly increasing portion sizes if you think you can sustain your current diet (noun) choices long term. Alternatively just add a snack - that can be one eaten just for enjoyment!
    300 - 500 cals is only really the equivalent of a sandwich.
    As an alternative it's very easy to get that by adding a portion of starchy carbs to a meal.

    My experience was a bit different as I lost my weight eating mostly at maintenance and only dieting 2 days a week - so for me returning to normal/maintenance didn't involve any different food choices.
  • mgookin
    mgookin Posts: 92 Member
    edited October 2016
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    Switch from light to regular. I needed to add calories into my diet without going to much over because I was under eating. I switched to whole milk products, regular peanut butter instead of the powdered, use olive oil more often, regular instead of light butter, thicker sliced bread instead of thin, etc.

    I would sometimes increase my portion size just by about 5-10 grams depending on the food.

    All the small changes add up.
  • ctcunningham72
    ctcunningham72 Posts: 3 Member
    edited October 2016
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    You could try drinking one of those meal replacement shakes as a snack instead of using it for a meal. The one i use for my meal replacement is 240 calories. Its balanced nutrition wise and it has protein and carbs. That way you can easily track the amount of calories you increase by. Get one that has good taste and various flavors. Drink it on days you need extra calories. If you start gaining, you can just cut the shake out of diet or increase exercise until you get back to your maintenance point. That enables you to change nothing about your diet that has gotten you to your goal, yet allows you to add or decrease as needed to maintain.
  • TavistockToad
    TavistockToad Posts: 35,719 Member
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    peanut butter!
  • lorrpb
    lorrpb Posts: 11,464 Member
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    Start increasing your calories now. You should be running no more than 250/day deficit= 1/2 lb per week. Going into maintenance will hardly be noticeable. No reason to be anxious if you continue weighing your food accurately. It's the same process as losing: weigh & log to reach a daily/weekly goal.
  • CALS0CCERBEAR87
    CALS0CCERBEAR87 Posts: 38 Member
    edited October 2016
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    lorrpb wrote: »
    Start increasing your calories now. You should be running no more than 250/day deficit= 1/2 lb per week. Going into maintenance will hardly be noticeable. No reason to be anxious if you continue weighing your food accurately. It's the same process as losing: weigh & log to reach a daily/weekly goal.

    If someone is male 180 lbs and wants to reach 150 by losing 3 lbs a week...about 10 to 12 lbs amonth/30lbs in less than 3 months...is it bad?

  • trigden1991
    trigden1991 Posts: 4,658 Member
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    CALS0CCERBEAR87 wrote: »
    lorrpb wrote: »
    Start increasing your calories now. You should be running no more than 250/day deficit= 1/2 lb per week. Going into maintenance will hardly be noticeable. No reason to be anxious if you continue weighing your food accurately. It's the same process as losing: weigh & log to reach a daily/weekly goal.

    If someone is male 180 lbs and wants to reach 150 by losing 3 lbs a week...about 10 to 12 lbs amonth/30lbs in less than 3 months...is it bad?

    Losing more than 1% of your bodyweight a week is generally not seen as healthy. By this calculation that would be around 1.5lbs a week, therefore taking you 20 weeks.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
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    CALS0CCERBEAR87 wrote: »
    lorrpb wrote: »
    Start increasing your calories now. You should be running no more than 250/day deficit= 1/2 lb per week. Going into maintenance will hardly be noticeable. No reason to be anxious if you continue weighing your food accurately. It's the same process as losing: weigh & log to reach a daily/weekly goal.

    If someone is male 180 lbs and wants to reach 150 by losing 3 lbs a week...about 10 to 12 lbs amonth/30lbs in less than 3 months...is it bad?

    @CALS0CCERBEAR87
    Yes it's probably bad - assuming that the person wants their weight loss to come from their body fat as much as possible, there's limits on how fast you can metabolise stored fat.
    A very overweight person can lose fat at a higher rate than someone leaner.

    That's one of the reasons a taper down of calorie deficit / rate of loss is recommended the nearer you get to goal.

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