Very few extra calories once I go into maintenance
ellefox70
Posts: 58 Member
I have just checked as I am now very close to goal weight, and I will only be getting 250 extra calories once I switch from losing .5 per week to maintenance. Just want to check that is right. Can u sense the disappointment whilst typing?! Was hoping for a few more there to play with....
2
Replies
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Yes
0.5lb is 250 calorie deficit
1lb is 500 calories
2lb is 1000 calories5 -
Yes the maths is correct but have you in fact been losing half a pound a week over the last month or so?4
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Can I just say, take it slowly.
I hit target recently from being 500cals (1600 a day) in deficit and wanted to ensure I didn't just slam my progress into reverse.
I added 100 cals (1700) back onto daily target for a week (lost a pound).
Following week I added another 100 cals (1800) - lost another pound.
Am now on 300 cals a day more (1900) than when actively 'losing' and have just weighed this morning. Weight is exactly the same as last week. So, I've kind of hit my maintenance cals for my 'new' weight slowly - rather than upping them straight back to what they were at my 'old' weight. If that makes sense? I reckon my long term maintenance will be 1950 per day going on the figures I've collected.
So, basically - if you've lost a fair chunk of weight, that 250 might actually be too many now. (I've lost 12lbs since end of December - if that helps clarify)
Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings :-( Just wanted to make sure you didn't end up posting in a different forum in a month or two!6 -
Yep 250 cals extra is correct...and its still 250 more than you were getting.
6 -
I have just checked as I am now very close to goal weight, and I will only be getting 250 extra calories once I switch from losing .5 per week to maintenance. Just want to check that is right. Can u sense the disappointment whilst typing?! Was hoping for a few more there to play with....
yep!
that's why exercise gets a big thumbs up from me... extra calories!10 -
Depressing isn't it?
There is however a possibility that your real maintenance figure is slightly higher.
In practice people who reverse diet (slowly add in more calories over a period of weeks) find that they settle at slightly more cals than anticipated. This is nothing to do with the process of reverse dieting but, that when given more calories, people tend to naturally increase NEAT and therefore need slightly more to maintain.
Fingers crossed that this applies to you.7 -
StealthHealth wrote: »Depressing isn't it?
There is however a possibility that your real maintenance figure is slightly higher.
In practice people who reverse diet (slowly add in more calories over a period of weeks) find that they settle at slightly more cals than anticipated. This is nothing to do with the process of reverse dieting but, that when given more calories, people tend to naturally increase NEAT and therefore need slightly more to maintain.
Fingers crossed that this applies to you.
^^^^ Yep. ^^^^
I found my maintenance level and then a month or so later started to lose again and had to bump up my calories a little.
Personally I think it's worth while experimenting after finding current maintenance by bumping up 100 cals for a month. It's only going to be at worst a 1lb gain in c. 35 days and there's a chance you may get a pleasant surprise.5 -
Yes the maths is correct but have you in fact been losing half a pound a week over the last month or so?
^this. OP how long have you been eating at a deficit? Was the deficit always 250 cals/day? What were your actual results? Was your loss steady? How much did you lose total? Do you exercise, and eat back those exercise calories?1 -
250 calories means you can have an extra cookie. That's not such a bad thing.
That being said, I find that I exercise more now that I've lost weight than I did while losing weight. When losing weight I had a goal of 1,600 and I was exercising to bring that up over 2,000. Now, my maintenance without exercise is about 2,400. It is a rare day when I don't eat at least 3,000 calories and my weight has still fallen to closer to the low side of my maintenance range.3 -
Hmm, can't work out how to copy and paste. But to reply to Winogelato, I've been losing since middle of Jan and have lost about 10lbs. It's come off quicker than I expected especially as I have eaten back all my exercise calories and have had a few days where I've gone lots over. I did have it set to losing 1lb per week but felt it was coming off a bit too quickly so readjusted to .5 about 3 or 4 weeks ago. I didn't have much to lose but am pleased with how easily it has come off. Having said that I am exercising lots more than previously so I expect that has a lot to do with it.
So once I hit my target (imagine in 3 or 4 weeks time) can I manually adjust my cals rather than take what MFP says is maintenance, or do I have to just eat less than it suggests (which I'm sure I will find tricky!)0 -
Yep. That's correct. I went from 1280 for 0.25kg to 1485. Still need a lot of preplanning to get to those 1485.1
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Hmm, can't work out how to copy and paste. But to reply to Winogelato, I've been losing since middle of Jan and have lost about 10lbs. It's come off quicker than I expected especially as I have eaten back all my exercise calories and have had a few days where I've gone lots over. I did have it set to losing 1lb per week but felt it was coming off a bit too quickly so readjusted to .5 about 3 or 4 weeks ago. I didn't have much to lose but am pleased with how easily it has come off. Having said that I am exercising lots more than previously so I expect that has a lot to do with it.
So once I hit my target (imagine in 3 or 4 weeks time) can I manually adjust my cals rather than take what MFP says is maintenance, or do I have to just eat less than it suggests (which I'm sure I will find tricky!)
Hit the "quote" button in the lower left corner of a post you want to quote and show.
You can change your goal in MFP from "lose 0.5 lb/week" to "'maintain my weight" and the system will calculate a maintenance goal for you based on current stats. That doesn't include exercise though so you would still eat back exercise cals when you work out.
Alternatively, you can manually set a maintenance goal for yourself (some people use a TDEE calculator which does estimate exercise burns as well, and then just eat that amount.
Or, as others suggested, you can up your calories a little st a time, monitoring results until you get to a point where you stop losing, and then see if that is your maintenance number. The calculators are just estimates, and they may over or underestimate based on your actual calorie burn. I'm a 5'2 female over 40 who maintains a weight of 120 with a TDEE of 2200, which is higher than all the calculators would suggest.3 -
WinoGelato wrote: »Hmm, can't work out how to copy and paste. But to reply to Winogelato, I've been losing since middle of Jan and have lost about 10lbs. It's come off quicker than I expected especially as I have eaten back all my exercise calories and have had a few days where I've gone lots over. I did have it set to losing 1lb per week but felt it was coming off a bit too quickly so readjusted to .5 about 3 or 4 weeks ago. I didn't have much to lose but am pleased with how easily it has come off. Having said that I am exercising lots more than previously so I expect that has a lot to do with it.
So once I hit my target (imagine in 3 or 4 weeks time) can I manually adjust my cals rather than take what MFP says is maintenance, or do I have to just eat less than it suggests (which I'm sure I will find tricky!)
Hit the "quote" button in the lower left corner of a post you want to quote and show.
You can change your goal in MFP from "lose 0.5 lb/week" to "'maintain my weight" and the system will calculate a maintenance goal for you based on current stats. That doesn't include exercise though so you would still eat back exercise cals when you work out.
Alternatively, you can manually set a maintenance goal for yourself (some people use a TDEE calculator which does estimate exercise burns as well, and then just eat that amount.
Or, as others suggested, you can up your calories a little st a time, monitoring results until you get to a point where you stop losing, and then see if that is your maintenance number. The calculators are just estimates, and they may over or underestimate based on your actual calorie burn. I'm a 5'2 female over 40 who maintains a weight of 120 with a TDEE of 2200, which is higher than all the calculators would suggest.
Wow that's a big tdee for a person your size. I'm a male 5'9" 174 ish pounds and my tdee sedentary days is 2150. On days when I'm walking and active at work it bumps up to 2400 or so.3 -
jeepinshawn wrote: »WinoGelato wrote: »Hmm, can't work out how to copy and paste. But to reply to Winogelato, I've been losing since middle of Jan and have lost about 10lbs. It's come off quicker than I expected especially as I have eaten back all my exercise calories and have had a few days where I've gone lots over. I did have it set to losing 1lb per week but felt it was coming off a bit too quickly so readjusted to .5 about 3 or 4 weeks ago. I didn't have much to lose but am pleased with how easily it has come off. Having said that I am exercising lots more than previously so I expect that has a lot to do with it.
So once I hit my target (imagine in 3 or 4 weeks time) can I manually adjust my cals rather than take what MFP says is maintenance, or do I have to just eat less than it suggests (which I'm sure I will find tricky!)
Hit the "quote" button in the lower left corner of a post you want to quote and show.
You can change your goal in MFP from "lose 0.5 lb/week" to "'maintain my weight" and the system will calculate a maintenance goal for you based on current stats. That doesn't include exercise though so you would still eat back exercise cals when you work out.
Alternatively, you can manually set a maintenance goal for yourself (some people use a TDEE calculator which does estimate exercise burns as well, and then just eat that amount.
Or, as others suggested, you can up your calories a little st a time, monitoring results until you get to a point where you stop losing, and then see if that is your maintenance number. The calculators are just estimates, and they may over or underestimate based on your actual calorie burn. I'm a 5'2 female over 40 who maintains a weight of 120 with a TDEE of 2200, which is higher than all the calculators would suggest.
Wow that's a big tdee for a person your size. I'm a male 5'9" 174 ish pounds and my tdee sedentary days is 2150. On days when I'm walking and active at work it bumps up to 2400 or so.
<shrug>. I average 15K steps/day and do circuit training a few times a week. That's the number my FitBit says, and I've been maintaining for 2+ years, so I'm pretty sure it's accurate.5 -
Im trying to find my maintenance calories and it's very tricky. Ive slowly added calories in each week. It's hard to tell if i'm maintaining or if I can push my calories up a little more because I havent lost or gained. I wanna be able to eat as much as possible! I'll also add that my weekends screw up finding the accurate calories because I'll eat out much more.0
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obviously is accurate, I'm just a bit jelly!WinoGelato wrote: »jeepinshawn wrote: »WinoGelato wrote: »Hmm, can't work out how to copy and paste. But to reply to Winogelato, I've been losing since middle of Jan and have lost about 10lbs. It's come off quicker than I expected especially as I have eaten back all my exercise calories and have had a few days where I've gone lots over. I did have it set to losing 1lb per week but felt it was coming off a bit too quickly so readjusted to .5 about 3 or 4 weeks ago. I didn't have much to lose but am pleased with how easily it has come off. Having said that I am exercising lots more than previously so I expect that has a lot to do with it.
So once I hit my target (imagine in 3 or 4 weeks time) can I manually adjust my cals rather than take what MFP says is maintenance, or do I have to just eat less than it suggests (which I'm sure I will find tricky!)
Hit the "quote" button in the lower left corner of a post you want to quote and show.
You can change your goal in MFP from "lose 0.5 lb/week" to "'maintain my weight" and the system will calculate a maintenance goal for you based on current stats. That doesn't include exercise though so you would still eat back exercise cals when you work out.
Alternatively, you can manually set a maintenance goal for yourself (some people use a TDEE calculator which does estimate exercise burns as well, and then just eat that amount.
Or, as others suggested, you can up your calories a little st a time, monitoring results until you get to a point where you stop losing, and then see if that is your maintenance number. The calculators are just estimates, and they may over or underestimate based on your actual calorie burn. I'm a 5'2 female over 40 who maintains a weight of 120 with a TDEE of 2200, which is higher than all the calculators would suggest.
Wow that's a big tdee for a person your size. I'm a male 5'9" 174 ish pounds and my tdee sedentary days is 2150. On days when I'm walking and active at work it bumps up to 2400 or so.
<shrug>. I average 15K steps/day and do circuit training a few times a week. That's the number my FitBit says, and I've been maintaining for 2+ years, so I'm pretty sure it's accurate.6 -
Kimblesnbits13 wrote: »Im trying to find my maintenance calories and it's very tricky. Ive slowly added calories in each week. It's hard to tell if i'm maintaining or if I can push my calories up a little more because I havent lost or gained. I wanna be able to eat as much as possible! I'll also add that my weekends screw up finding the accurate calories because I'll eat out much more.
Oh and by rereading what I wrote, that totally didnt help the OP lol. So i'll add that yes, once you hit maintenance calories, it's not much different than losing if you've been at .5 deficit. It's just a reminder that you cant go back to how much you used to eat before losing weight. I was disappointed at first when I realized this, but now just going with it and accepting it. It's not difficult but sometimes I just wanna eat everything.1 -
I have been adding calories back once per week for the last 7 weeks trying to get to my maintenance calories. I started this before I hit my target weight in order to slow down my weight loss. Now I have gone past my original goal and am still losing weight here and there (mostly because of workouts). I think that is the hardest part to gauge in maintenance- how many of your workout calories to eat back. That's a tricky calculation...4
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You can change your goal in MFP from "lose 0.5 lb/week" to "'maintain my weight" and the system will calculate a maintenance goal for you based on current stats. That doesn't include exercise though so you would still eat back exercise cals when you work out.
Alternatively, you can manually set a maintenance goal for yourself (some people use a TDEE calculator which does estimate exercise burns as well, and then just eat that amount.
Or, as others suggested, you can up your calories a little st a time, monitoring results until you get to a point where you stop losing, and then see if that is your maintenance number. The calculators are just estimates, and they may over or underestimate based on your actual calorie burn. I'm a 5'2 female over 40 who maintains a weight of 120 with a TDEE of 2200, which is higher than all the calculators would suggest.[/quote]
I'm also a 40+ 5'2 female and I much prefer the sound of 2200 to maintain! Think I will have to investigate fitting more exercise into my daily routine! Fingers crossed. Thanx for your help.1 -
Kimblesnbits13 wrote: »Kimblesnbits13 wrote: »Im trying to find my maintenance calories and it's very tricky. Ive slowly added calories in each week. It's hard to tell if i'm maintaining or if I can push my calories up a little more because I havent lost or gained. I wanna be able to eat as much as possible! I'll also add that my weekends screw up finding the accurate calories because I'll eat out much more.
Oh and by rereading what I wrote, that totally didnt help the OP lol. So i'll add that yes, once you hit maintenance calories, it's not much different than losing if you've been at .5 deficit. It's just a reminder that you cant go back to how much you used to eat before losing weight. I was disappointed at first when I realized this, but now just going with it and accepting it. It's not difficult but sometimes I just wanna eat everything.
Yep I hear u! Thanx for the advice0 -
You might be surprised...1
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StealthHealth wrote: »Depressing isn't it?
There is however a possibility that your real maintenance figure is slightly higher.
In practice people who reverse diet (slowly add in more calories over a period of weeks) find that they settle at slightly more cals than anticipated. This is nothing to do with the process of reverse dieting but, that when given more calories, people tend to naturally increase NEAT and therefore need slightly more to maintain.
Fingers crossed that this applies to you.
Yep, fingers crossed! Thanx0 -
Still need a lot of preplanning to get to those 1485.
So with 250 on top, that's daily of 1735. That's not low, unless you like to have three squares of 600 calories... (I'm always amazed by people who can pack away 600 at breakfast and still have room for lunch!)
Do you do NEAT, or TDEE? If it's TDEE, that seems a little low, but not crazily so. For NEAT, don't forget that you could then eat back any exercise
0 -
cwolfman13 wrote: »You might be surprised...
I'm hoping i'll be surprised....but I'm about a month into upping calories and havent lost or gained....hoping to see a woosh loss sometime soon so I can up them cals more lol. OP you might have this happen to you. I've heard many people thinking they've found their maintenance cals then bam they've lost another pound. Fingers crossed for the both of us haha1 -
Kimblesnbits13 wrote: »cwolfman13 wrote: »You might be surprised...
I'm hoping i'll be surprised....but I'm about a month into upping calories and havent lost or gained....hoping to see a woosh loss sometime soon so I can up them cals more lol. OP you might have this happen to you. I've heard many people thinking they've found their maintenance cals then bam they've lost another pound. Fingers crossed for the both of us haha
When I went to maintenance I was losing extremely slowly...not even 1/2 Lb per week and was only eating around 2100 calories...figured maintenance would be around 2200-2300.
I started upping calories and actually started losing more weight...I had more energy and was more fidgety...my finger and toe nails started growing very quickly...my hair and beard started growing more quickly...I had difficulty sitting through television shows and movies and my workouts went through the roof and I started setting PRs in everything...I kept increasing and increasing and lost an additional 5 Lbs or so over the course of a month...I finally tapered off at around 3,000 calories per day.3 -
jeepinshawn wrote: »WinoGelato wrote: »Hmm, can't work out how to copy and paste. But to reply to Winogelato, I've been losing since middle of Jan and have lost about 10lbs. It's come off quicker than I expected especially as I have eaten back all my exercise calories and have had a few days where I've gone lots over. I did have it set to losing 1lb per week but felt it was coming off a bit too quickly so readjusted to .5 about 3 or 4 weeks ago. I didn't have much to lose but am pleased with how easily it has come off. Having said that I am exercising lots more than previously so I expect that has a lot to do with it.
So once I hit my target (imagine in 3 or 4 weeks time) can I manually adjust my cals rather than take what MFP says is maintenance, or do I have to just eat less than it suggests (which I'm sure I will find tricky!)
Hit the "quote" button in the lower left corner of a post you want to quote and show.
You can change your goal in MFP from "lose 0.5 lb/week" to "'maintain my weight" and the system will calculate a maintenance goal for you based on current stats. That doesn't include exercise though so you would still eat back exercise cals when you work out.
Alternatively, you can manually set a maintenance goal for yourself (some people use a TDEE calculator which does estimate exercise burns as well, and then just eat that amount.
Or, as others suggested, you can up your calories a little st a time, monitoring results until you get to a point where you stop losing, and then see if that is your maintenance number. The calculators are just estimates, and they may over or underestimate based on your actual calorie burn. I'm a 5'2 female over 40 who maintains a weight of 120 with a TDEE of 2200, which is higher than all the calculators would suggest.
Wow that's a big tdee for a person your size. I'm a male 5'9" 174 ish pounds and my tdee sedentary days is 2150. On days when I'm walking and active at work it bumps up to 2400 or so.
My TDEE sedentary is maybe 1700 calories. But with activity I usually get at least 2400 (5'5" 38yo 140 lbs female). That's for 15k+ steps. Yesterday I burned 2900 calories (29k steps)... I got the numbers off my Fitbit and it seems consistent with my weight variations in the last 3 months (if anything.. it seems to underestimate a bit).
Activity makes a HUGE difference.2 -
jeepinshawn wrote: »WinoGelato wrote: »Hmm, can't work out how to copy and paste. But to reply to Winogelato, I've been losing since middle of Jan and have lost about 10lbs. It's come off quicker than I expected especially as I have eaten back all my exercise calories and have had a few days where I've gone lots over. I did have it set to losing 1lb per week but felt it was coming off a bit too quickly so readjusted to .5 about 3 or 4 weeks ago. I didn't have much to lose but am pleased with how easily it has come off. Having said that I am exercising lots more than previously so I expect that has a lot to do with it.
So once I hit my target (imagine in 3 or 4 weeks time) can I manually adjust my cals rather than take what MFP says is maintenance, or do I have to just eat less than it suggests (which I'm sure I will find tricky!)
Hit the "quote" button in the lower left corner of a post you want to quote and show.
You can change your goal in MFP from "lose 0.5 lb/week" to "'maintain my weight" and the system will calculate a maintenance goal for you based on current stats. That doesn't include exercise though so you would still eat back exercise cals when you work out.
Alternatively, you can manually set a maintenance goal for yourself (some people use a TDEE calculator which does estimate exercise burns as well, and then just eat that amount.
Or, as others suggested, you can up your calories a little st a time, monitoring results until you get to a point where you stop losing, and then see if that is your maintenance number. The calculators are just estimates, and they may over or underestimate based on your actual calorie burn. I'm a 5'2 female over 40 who maintains a weight of 120 with a TDEE of 2200, which is higher than all the calculators would suggest.
Wow that's a big tdee for a person your size. I'm a male 5'9" 174 ish pounds and my tdee sedentary days is 2150. On days when I'm walking and active at work it bumps up to 2400 or so.
My TDEE sedentary is maybe 1700 calories. But with activity I usually get at least 2400 (5'5" 38yo 140 lbs female). That's for 15k+ steps. Yesterday I burned 2900 calories (29k steps)... I got the numbers off my Fitbit and it seems consistent with my weight variations in the last 3 months (if anything.. it seems to underestimate a bit).
Activity makes a HUGE difference.
Ok. So I'm now going to investigate TDEE0 -
What is frustrating is all the different methods out there. I am an Apple Watch user. My active calories burned yesterday were about 1,100. My resting calories were around 1,600 or a TDEE of about 2,600. that was with around 25,000 steps (including a 45 minute run). Yet I have only worked myself up to about 1,800 calories a day in food (as accurate as I can be with scales, measurements, etc.). So I am really only eating a fraction of my workout calories. At this rate, if the numbers are right I should still be losing around 1 1/2 lbs per week. I am expecting the loss (if any) to be under a pound. I think the healthy part of the entire thing is that we are all at least looking at it closely. It seems like we will all arrive where we need to be. Wouldn't it be nice if it were more just a mathematical calculation...0
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adipace815 wrote: »What is frustrating is all the different methods out there. I am an Apple Watch user. My active calories burned yesterday were about 1,100. My resting calories were around 1,600 or a TDEE of about 2,600. that was with around 25,000 steps (including a 45 minute run). Yet I have only worked myself up to about 1,800 calories a day in food (as accurate as I can be with scales, measurements, etc.). So I am really only eating a fraction of my workout calories. At this rate, if the numbers are right I should still be losing around 1 1/2 lbs per week. I am expecting the loss (if any) to be under a pound. I think the healthy part of the entire thing is that we are all at least looking at it closely. It seems like we will all arrive where we need to be. Wouldn't it be nice if it were more just a mathematical calculation...
2600 calories with 25k steps and a 45 minutes run doesn't seem far-fetched, honestly. My guess is that you're probably eating more than you think, which is very easy to do with packaged foods or eating out.0 -
Didn't heybales have a great spreadsheet for calculating TDEE? I remember coming across it at some point; anyone have the link to that? I'm easing back up to maintenance myself now.
NM; found it.
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/heybales/view/weight-loss-spreadsheet-for-bmr-tdee-deficit-calculations-426221 if anyone else wants to experiment with it. 2
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