Very few extra calories once I go into maintenance
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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
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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 -
Yes and that is just it. I am doing about all you can with weighing and measuring food. I track everything and I mean everything. So within the margin of error, I am pretty solid with my food intake. I tend to agree that the calorie burn is pretty reasonable. But my results are not reflective of the calorie deficit of 800 calories per day. I tend to think it may be more my resting calories burned. Either way, based on my logging efforts and my workout tracking, I am hoping to find the "sweet spot" for my maximum calorie intake. I think that will have to be different on workout days and non-workout days.1
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Yes, if you were losing slowly at the end, as you should be, then there is very little difference. I have found that I eat the same at home and just allow myself a little extra when we go out, which is often. Even at that, I'm still trying to find the right balance after 6 months.
100 cals per day too much can cause 10 lbs per year gain. This is what I'm trying to be watchful for. My weight gain pattern was 5-10 lb per year for 25 years. So I can no longer tell myself that "a few pounds" don't matter. Of course, that is challenging to negotiate because of normal daily fluctuations. Even with a trending app, it's been tricky to manage.1 -
Yes, if you were losing slowly at the end, as you should be, then there is very little difference. I have found that I eat the same at home and just allow myself a little extra when we go out, which is often. Even at that, I'm still trying to find the right balance after 6 months.
100 cals per day too much can cause 10 lbs per year gain. This is what I'm trying to be watchful for. My weight gain pattern was 5-10 lb per year for 25 years. So I can no longer tell myself that "a few pounds" don't matter. Of course, that is challenging to negotiate because of normal daily fluctuations. Even with a trending app, it's been tricky to manage.
This rings very true for me. My weight gain was so slow over so many years that it took a friends well meaning comment to make me even notice that I was no longer the skinny Minnie I had always been!
Great suggestion re just relaxing a little when going out although I have enjoyed giving myself the permission to have time to exercise and think this is now the new norm. The kids want to know why I haven't been out now if I skip it!. And the family hasn't imploded whilst I've been away. Important lesson learned!
Still a couple of pounds to lose then I look forward to experimenting with maintenance!2
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