Switched to maintenance all at once. What should I expect?

cpl4118 · January 2019

Hi there,

I decided to switch to maintenance as I am at a normal BMI. I didn’t follow advice I have heard of slowly increasing the calories, I just simply started eating at maintenance one day after months of eating at a caloric deficit.

I’ve started lifting so I am eating a high protein diet at my maintenance calories to lose fat and build muscle. I am lifting 4x a week and I previously was lifting 1-2 a week with a bigger focus on cardio.

I know I’m going to gain water weight from the sudden increase in calories, but how long do you think it will take to even out? I just don’t want to gain fat.

paperpudding · January 2019

when I switched to maitenance I didnt gradually increase the calories either - I just reset MFP to say maitenance instead of lose 1/2lb per week and ate to that new target from then on.

I dont recall any temporary water weight increase.

kami3006 · January 2019

It will vary by person and by how much of a jump they made going back to maintenance. I went up a couple pounds and lost one again after about a week. The other pound remained but I'm sure it was, at least partly, due to having more food/waste in my system.

AnnPT77 · January 2019

How could we possibly know?

You don't even say whether you calculated maintenance calories from carefully logged weight loss experience, MFP estimates, or a TDEE calculator.

When I increase strength training, I gain a couple of pounds of water weight, and hang onto it as long as I keep sensibly progressively strength training. It isn't fat, so I don't care. If the muscles keep repairing, I keep holding a little water. NBD.

If you lose fat at (true) maintenance calories and stable weight, it will be super slow, closely tracking the (super slow) increase of muscle mass gain. A pound a month would be great for a woman, under best circumstances; maybe up to twice that for a man.

If you're at true maintenance calories, the glycogen-related water weight gain is permanent (when losing, it's fat loss that "evens it out" - ditto with scale gain from increased average digestive system contents that come with the extra food intake in those extra calories). (The scale jump from unusually more carbs or sodium, at consistent calories, can be temporary, if l/when the carbs/sodium drop back to previous baseline levels).

I'm not trying to be harsh, but it's important to understand that true maintenance calories mean roughly stable fat and lean tissue pounds. Water weight and digestive contents are an add-on, and will fluctuate or hold steady, depending on circumstances.

It's NBD, it's not fat, but it'll show on the scale.

CarvedTones · January 2019

I have been in maintenance over 10 months and I am still not sure what my maintenance calories are. It's mostly because of fairly intense exercise at frequent but irregular intervals and duration and partly from getting a little sloppy logging sometimes. I have trended up and down, mostly down. I am 11 pounds below what was goal, but goal put me at 24.9 and I didn't want to go over 25, even for a day so I set my maintenance range from 14 below goal to 4 below goal - 150 to 160. I am in the bottom half of the range now at 153 which seems like a good weight for me. I was down to this weight a few months ago and tried to maintain it and trended back up about 5 pounds (still in my range), made adjustments and trended back down. That seems common for people in maintenance. I will see if I have any better luck this time. My guess is that in a few weeks I will notice a trend up or down and adjust. then in a few weeks...

Switched to maintenance all at once. What should I expect?

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