Maintaining

angciex4500 · November 2020

I have started to maintain due to losing 21kg over 10 months and I have been adding 100 calories from 2 weeks ago, so I’ve added 200 already, from 1550 to 1750 calories a day and when I have done a weekly weigh in I have seen a 0.6kg weight increase! I am really stressing about this and was wondering if there is any advice that anyone can give me regarding this. Should i stay at 1750 calories for 2/3 weeks rather than 1 week to see if that helps and if I gain weight after the first week or shall I carry on and only stop at my maintenance calories. I do not want to gain weight I want to maintain my 53-54kg max weight as I understand that I will gain a few pounds due to an increase in food but I’ve been 2 weeks nearly and I’ve gained over half a kg.

sijomial · November 2020

That's the problem with weekly weigh ins, you get very few data points from which to try see a trend.
You won't have an idea if that weigh in was your "normal" weight that week or just a day when you had a blip upwards.
You haven't said how fast you were losing weight in the last month or so but from the mathematics alone is 200cals/day extra really enough to tip you from deficit to surplus, from fat loss to fat gain?
In a game of numbers you need more data and less emotion I'm afraid.

Trying to maintain within a one kilo range is very, very tight and likely to cause you far more stress. That leads to micromanaging your weight and (probably) constantly adjusting from, and fighting, perfectly normal weight fluctuations unrelated to your calorie balance. Suggest you widen your range (double perhaps).

TBH how you transition to maintenance calories isn't of great significance when you take a long term view - will it matter in 6 months or 1 year how fast you find your maintenance calories? Bump your calories as you planned to before you got one disappointing weigh in or defer an adjustment, whichever reduces your stress.

(Personally I just bumped my calories immediately to computed maintenace by adding 500cals, it worked out fine.)

briscogun · November 2020

0.6kg as a fluctuation goes isn't much. In maintenance you are going to fluctuate all over the place and its totally normal. Even if you eat the EXACT same foods every day with the EXACT same calorie count you would fluctuate from day to day. That's just how your body works.

I went into maintenance around May and my weight chart graph line looks like a magnitude 9 earthquake! Up and down all over the place! I have a "goal weight" and I try to stay within 5 pounds of that, plus or minus. If I get too low I eat a little more, I I get too high I go back into a deficit.

It takes a while to get used to it. It took me a few months to really wrap my mind around NOT losing and just kinda hanging out in a range, bouncing up and down, kind of like a raft on a lake. Just bobbing up and down.

If you try to maintain one exact weight you will go mad. Don't even try. The body is a living organic uncontrollable thing that will do what it wants to do to a certain degree. Don't try to be perfect. You have to learn to live with the ups and downs of maintenance, but this is what you worked so hard for! Now use those skills you acquired while losing and just apply them to maintaining: log if you need to, track if you need to, weigh every day if you need to. Find something that works for you and do that!

charmmeth · November 2020

I weigh daily for exactly this reason: I want to see how things are varying and to be able to look at trends. My weight can vary by 1kg or more from day to day, and my rolling seven day averages over the past few weeks show quite a lot of variance too. Here they are since the beginning of November (in kg): 77.00, 76.84, 76.79, 76.86, 76.96, 77.07, 77.24, 77.24, 77.29, 77.31, 77.16, 77.06, 77.04, 76.90, 76.81, 76.71, 76.63. I am actually still losing, but it really didn't feel like it last week!
Once I have an average at around 75.5 kg I shall switch to maintenance (aiming at present for 75kg +/- 2.5 kg). I think I am going to add the whole 500 cals at once and see what happens. Once I have a sense of whether that is my maintenance, I shall think about my maintenace level and might aim to lose a bit more to maintain at 72kg +/- 2.5kg.

Maintaining

Replies

Categories