Almost there. Now what?

Trish1c wrote: »

I'm within 10 pounds of my goal weight.

I figure I'll get there by the end of the year. So 2017 will be the year I maintain.

I was the same weight from about 20 through 35. By 40 the pounds started to creep up. My lifestyle didn't change all that much. As I near menopause I wanted those extra 25 pounds gone & I'm almost there.

So now what? I never had to think about food / weight before.

How do I transition from loss to maintenance. Do I go reconfigure my TDEE? I assume it's less now that I weigh less.

You shouldn't really need to recalculate anything in theory. If you have been tracking calorie intake and you plan on continuing and you are currently losing weight, add some calories in and monitor your weight for a week. Adjust calories up or down based on change in weight.

Consider that you're dealing with estimates and that maintenance is a moving target, so you're not going to be perfect nor do you need to be. You just need to get close and be consistent.

I echo the above, and will add, give yourself a weight range +/- 5 pounds to work with in maintenance. This is especially true at our age and living in a female body.

What is the theory behind slowing down your rate of loss as you near maintenance?

johunt615 wrote: »

What is the theory behind slowing down your rate of loss as you near maintenance?

Partly the leaner you are the less easy it is for all your weight loss to come from fat - not really much of an issue unless you either have a rapid rate of loss or are very lean.

But mainly so you slowly transition to maintenance rather than have to make a large and sudden adjustment.
It's not uncommon in this forum to read people's experience of shooting past their goal weight, struggling to eat enough, feeling lost without the "reward" of seeing weight loss on the bathroom scales every week etc.....

A sudden jump in calories also frequently messes with people's heads - they see a jump in weight (water weight and more food in your system mostly) and freak out and return to calorie deficit. As so begins a stressful yoyo effect trying to micro-manage normal weight fluctuations.

The transition to maintenance is as much mental/emotional as it is the mathematics of calorie balance.

I've thought about what I would do when I reached maintenance every day for 2 1/2 years. When I lost weight when younger, I just thought that I had worked so hard at it there would be no way I would regain. But of course I did, so now at age 61 I knew I needed some kind of plan. I've set a 5 lb maintenance range which I'm at the top end of now. Still trying to get to the bottom of it. Then when I reach the top of range I will resume logging and reduce my calories by 250-500 until I get back into my range. After figuring out your stats, you need a plan of action to prevent regain. Yay for you!

I've been maintaining for about a year, and honestly I don't do anything different from when I was losing. It was a lifestyle change of eating healthily, not overeating, and getting exercise. I did relax on my calorie intake and let it average a couple hundred higher than when I was losing. Now that I'm confident in self control abilities I also allow myself to indulge (within reason) at parties or when I go out without really thinking about it. The couple days before or after I'll eat clean and/or limit calories and it balances out.