Should I keep increasing calories to find maintenance if I'm not losing?

purple4sure05
purple4sure05 Posts: 287 Member
in Goal: Maintaining Weight
Hey guys. I've posted here before about my struggle figuring out maintenance calories, and looking for a bit more insight. In theory my maintenance calories should be 1950 to 2100 based on my initial weight loss, but I'm now averaging 1650 calories and am technically maintaining - up and down between 129.7 and 131.8 for the last 3 weeks. This is way less than what I should be at according to my prior stats... should i increase calories even though I'm technically maintaining on 1650?

For a breakdown of me personally, I was eating 1200 calories while losing weight. At first I lost 2 or more pounds per week until it slowed down to roughly 1.5 pounds per week the last month or so.

I started working toward maintenance by increasing to 1500 calories per day and my trend technically went down several pounds, but my weight only went down to about 1.5 pounds below my lowest weight before maintenance.

For the last two and a half weeks I've added one 2100 calorie day. Accounting for logging errors and occasional extra bites of fruit, etc I average the other 6 days at 1600. So 1671 calories on average per day.

I weigh everything I eat and am eating mostly the exact same foods I was eating before, so I assume logging issues arent at play here. Just wondering why this would be happening, and if it's definitely a bad idea to just up my calories even further.

Replies

  • staticsplit
    staticsplit Posts: 538 Member
    I'd try reverse dieting--slowly upping your calories and keeping an eye on your weight. There's a few threads floating around there about it. Try 1700 for a week or two, then 1800, then 1900. Keep an eye on your weight, see what happens.

    I can maintain on around 2100, but my WOE tends to be a few 1700-1900 days, a couple of 2000-2200 days, maybe one 2500+ day a week due to a social gathering, so tends to average out for me.
  • purple4sure05
    purple4sure05 Posts: 287 Member
    staticsplit wrote: »
    I'd try reverse dieting--slowly upping your calories and keeping an eye on your weight. There's a few threads floating around there about it. Try 1700 for a week or two, then 1800, then 1900. Keep an eye on your weight, see what happens.

    I can maintain on around 2100, but my WOE tends to be a few 1700-1900 days, a couple of 2000-2200 days, maybe one 2500+ day a week due to a social gathering, so tends to average out for me.

    I'm already doing that but I'm only on 1670 calories and I'm already not losing weight.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,585 Member
    sijomial wrote: »
    Don't be afraid to experiment!!

    If you added 100cals a day and discovered that your current intake is indeed exactly what you are currently eating then it's going to take 35 days to add a pound of fat. Which I hope you would agree isn't a big deal at all.

    On the other hand you may well find that your daily activity and exercise pick up and you continue to maintain on a higher amount (and can repeat the experiment again).

    Personal experience is that my maintenance calories ended up higher than the mathematics from my weight loss phase suggested by at least 200cals/day if not more.

    Think of the pros and cons of experimenting but in the perspective of a timescale of months rather than days or weeks.

    QFT.
  • nxd10
    nxd10 Posts: 4,570 Member
    I'd stay where you are. I'm stable and way under what I 'should be'. It could be I've got a slow metabolism. It could be I chronically underestimate size. But whatever. I log consistently and my weight is stable. That's the goal.
  • purple4sure05
    purple4sure05 Posts: 287 Member
    nxd10 wrote: »
    I'd stay where you are. I'm stable and way under what I 'should be'. It could be I've got a slow metabolism. It could be I chronically underestimate size. But whatever. I log consistently and my weight is stable. That's the goal.

    I just feel like that doesn't make much sense, and I feel hungry a lot of the time because I'm so active. I do 45 minutes of cardio and 30 minutes of strength training 6 days a week. As a 5'6" 130 pound person, 1650 seems exceptionally low, and that number adds 100 per day more than I actually log since occasionally I take a bite of fruit or rice when I'm packing my lunch for the next day. Not to mention I was just losing a pound and a half per week or more on 1200 cal.
  • slbbw
    slbbw Posts: 329 Member
    From the math alone based on your weight loss you should be maintaining at 1950. So a 1650 daily intake would be a 300 calorie deficit which is roughly 1/2 lb a week. That slow speed of weight loss can easily be masked by food weight and water weight. Are you happy on 1650? If you are happy there and not feeling deprived keep it up for a month or more and see if the scale is still going down but slowly. If you would like to eat more than go up to 1750 -1800 hold there for a month or more and see what happens.

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