Reverse dieting? Help!!

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Sarah21797
Sarah21797 Posts: 16 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hello. I am a petite female. I have lost about 10lb. My maintence Calories pre weight loss was about 1800 and my new maintenance should be 1600 according to most online calculators. To lose weight I cut my carlories to about 1300 and i have been maintaining on 1300 for the last 4 months. How do I increase my calories to 1600 without gaining weight back??

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  • tapwaters
    tapwaters Posts: 428 Member
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    You'd need to build muscle and maintain more muscle mass to increase your daily maintenance calories.
  • Sarah21797
    Sarah21797 Posts: 16 Member
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    So increase calories and weight train? How much should I increase by to start with? Thanks
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
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    All at once in one jump or slowly over a period of weeks.
    Or a medium sized jump plus adjustments.
    Whatever way appeals to you but if you have been losing weight quickly recently then make your first adjustment a decent sized one.
    (Personally I just went straight from weight loss cals to maintenance cals but that's perhaps a minority choice.)

    How fast were you losing over the last month?

    Do realise that in a few months time it won't make the slightest bit of difiference how you get to maintenance, it will only matter that you did.

    The transition period is a drop in the ocean compared to your whole future maintaining in your goal weight range, that's where your attention and planning needs to be.

    200cal drop in maintenance cals seems rather a lot for just 10lbs lost, I'd be surprised if it's that much.
    What numbers does the calculator you used say when you try with both your old and new weights?

  • Sarah21797
    Sarah21797 Posts: 16 Member
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    Thank you. So am I too late to increase calories as I have been maintaining on 1300 for last few months??

    It says 1820 old weight 1650 new weight so not quite 200. Thanks
  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
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    If you're truly maintaining on 1,300 (that's a pretty low number to maintain, so my first thought would be to double-check to make sure your logging is as accurate as it could be), then your option to maintain on 1,600 without gaining weight is to add more activity to your day -- specifically, you need to use 300 more calories a day than you're using right now.

    While adding muscle can increase the number of calories you use per day, adding enough muscle to use 300 more calories per day is going to be quite a project.
  • LisaGetsMoving
    LisaGetsMoving Posts: 664 Member
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    Try eating the 1650 calories for a few weeks and weighing in weekly to see what happens. Building some muscle to help you burn more is a good thing, but that's going to take some time and effort and more calories. Doesn't happen overnight.
  • Thoin
    Thoin Posts: 942 Member
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    The way I read that I liked most was to increase by 100 calories every week or two and see if you gain weight or not.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
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    Making your diary public would help enormously, 1300 is very, very low.
    Would be very helpful to have some context about you, only you currently know your stats, activity and exercise.

    Activity and exercise are the primary ways you get a bigger daily allowance. Weight training and aiming to add some muscle would be a great aim but be realistic amount the timescales and end result on your calorie balance (it takes a long time and it's not a lot!).

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