Maintenance eating recommendations

jamesha100 · September 2021

Hi,
I am just starting losing weight with MFP for the fourth time. Previously I have been very committed to losing weight for approx 3-4 months, have stuck to my MFP allowance and dropped 40-50 pounds. I then drop off the wagon, all my bad habits return and the weight piles back on. During these previous attempts I never got to my final goal weight which would have been approx 75 pounds lost.

This time I think that I need to try to train myself to eat at maintenance calories during the losing period so that I am more prepared to adopt sensible eating post loss and avoid another repeat of the cycle.

I would like some ideas about how to do this as there are many possible options.

These could be:

Have two days a week eating at maintenance level
Have one week a month eating at maintenance
Eat at maintenance for a period after losing ten pounds

I want to lose the weight for good this time so, if it takes longer than before due to some time training myself in how to maintain I am cool with that.

Thanks in advance

cmriverside · September 2021

Well, depending on your current amount of weight to lose if you set your goals reasonably you'll ease in to Maintenance and you could use any of the above plans, but none of them are necessary. They are all good tools. I think the biggest thing is some kind of accountability for that first year post weight-loss. Like keep logging food. That first year post weight-loss can be a bumpy ride until hormones, habits, and self-image catch up.

Read the "Most Helpful Threads" in this forum:
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10300324/most-helpful-posts-goal-maintaining-weight-must-reads#latest

I don't think there is any one "set" way to do it but Maintenance breaks when eating at a deficit are a good idea.
Here's the great discussion. Page one will give you all you need to know :
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10604863/of-refeeds-and-diet-breaks/p1

I just followed this general guideline in the image below and when I got within 15 pounds I had a 200 calorie per day deficit. So "maintenance" wasn't much different.

wunderkindking · September 2021

I think any of your options will work and I did a lot of maintenance breaks -

But I really think the big thing you need to do, regardless of method, is pair it with the knowledge that
a-) This is absolutely forever. There is no 'got to goal weight go back ' lingering at the back of your mind. That's dangerous and
b-) Expect your weight loss to slow down and accept that will happen. We often rely too heavily on the scale to give us these little dopamine hits and 'yahoo' moments and when those go away it feels bad. Maintenance breaks can help with this.
c-) Don't turn this into a project. Make small changes at a time and fit those changes into your regular life, don't entirely alter your life to make losing weight or fitness the central part of it. You need to be consistent, not 100% DEDICATED all the time in everything. That crap's exhausting and inevitably must stop.

sijomial · September 2021

Or another option is to eat at your estimated goal weight maintenance calories.
Which in theory gives you a bigger deficit / faster rate of loss at the start which tapers off as you close on goal weight. And if your estimate is reasonable there's very little adjustment to be made when you get to goal.

Do think the major thing above the various techniques is to get away from the on the wagon / off the wagon thinking. Be careful of over-restricting or eating in some special (but unsustainable) way to lose weight.
Not so much diet as a verb for the short term but more diet the noun meaning what you eat long term to achieve your nutritional needs.

wunderkindking · September 2021

Oh, the thing I did I forgot to mention as an option (sijomial reminded me) was to set my cals to current maintenance (and adjust that goal with the tab every 3-4 lbs or so) and just eat 'less than that'. Kept it easy, gave me flexibility and helped me get used to keeping a long view on calories while following my hungry/not days and rhythms.

booboo1000 · September 2021

Best wishes to you.

I've lost half my heaviest-ever weight (I'm more than 100 pounds lighter than my heaviest) and am now ten pounds above the lowest limit for being in the "healthy weight" range. I'm learning to maintain, never having managed it before. My heaviest was 20 or so years ago, and two years ago I started my current efforts after regaining much of the 60 pounds I'd lost a few years before.

My weight loss strategy was different from what yu are describing as my initial goal was to stop gaining. Then, after about five months, I had lost enough to notice and feel better and set weight loss as my goal. About four months later I became very disciplined for a year, restarted MFP logging, and stayed at 1200 calories (I'm only 5'2" -- 158.75 cm) until I was well into the healthy weight range. (I would do it differently now, only because my motivation changed as time went on. COVID wasn't known two years ago when I started. As I learned about it and my vulnerability to a bad COVID outcome, I stepped up my efforts.)

When I was about ten pounds above my absolute lowest goal I added 50 calories each day and slowly lost down to where I am right now. That was about 10 days ago, and I have added an additional 50 calories each day and am hovering around my low goal, likely slowly losing. In a week or so I'll reassess and add calories as needed. Blood work tomorrow and a doctor visit in a week will also help determine if I'm on the right track. Once the snow starts falling and I'm shoveling the winter gifts of living in the Central New York region, I'll see if I need to add more calories for the seasonal activity.

mjglantz · September 2021

I think a few things helped me that might help you. One was to realize that this was for life so nothing was really off limits (except a few for animal rights issues and health) although my focus was on choosing to eat healthy foods most of the time. As I hit plateaus which I did, I considered those practice for maintenance and didn't do much different. Made sure I was tracking my food and keeping up with my exercise. Maybe dropped the calories a bit and eventually the plateau broke. As I lost weight I did gradually reduce the daily calorie goal. After about 1 1/2 years I hit a weight that just stuck and I was happy with that. By that time I was pretty used to eating the way I was eating so transition to maintenance wasn't that difficult.

Fflpnari · September 2021

I did an online calculator to figure out what my goal weight maintenance calories were. For me they were about 2400. I had about a 100 pounds to lose, so I set my calories to 2400. So basically eating at a deficit to lose weight set me up for maintenance. Training myself how to eat my maintenance calories and not feel deprived. Im pretty much at my goal weight!

Losing weight is exciting, but it gets boring once you hit your goal. So keep your mind engaged. Im starting to run, its really helped to have a health and fitness thing to focus on.

AnnPT77 · September 2021

I made it a practice not to do anything during weight loss that I wasn't willing to continue long-term to maintain, other than a sensibly moderate calorie deficit. As I got lighter, I intentionally reduced the deficit's size, trying to slow my weight loss more or less in line with the chart posted above. Once I got very close to maintenance, and was trying to dial in the right calorie level to maintain, I added gradually (50-100 daily calories at a time) then monitored until I could see the trend of my weight (which of course took longer with each calorie addition). It was like a slow off-ramp from loss to maintenance, no dramatic changes at any point.

Any of your strategies for practicing full maintenance calories could work.

What I think is more important, though, is not so much practicing the calorie level, but practicing the eating/activity *habits*. Those can be significantly much the same regardless of calorie deficit, things like your exercise schedule, efforts to sustain an active daily life routine in non-exercise ways, food choices, meal patterns, etc.

Sure, portion sizes and frequencies of some foods will need to differ when deficit is bigger vs. at maintenance calories, but the differences aren't necessarily dramatic or revolutionary. They can be more like tweaks.

So, my suggestion would be to focus on finding a sustainable way of eating (what foods, planned/purchased/prepared how, with what number of meals/snacks, etc.), and some reasonably enjoyable exercise and daily life activity pattern, something that moves you toward your goals but has a general outline that you can keep up permanently, just with a few extra calories added in on the eating side as you approach and reach goal weight.

People run into trouble, IMO, when they treat the whole of weight loss as a project with an end date, during which they use extreme measures (eating they don't truly enjoy, total self-denial of desired treats, exercises that are inconvenient or unpleasant) in pursuit of "success", i.e., reaching goal weight. They don't experiment and learn manageable, relatively easy, sustainable life patterns - new habits - that make maintaining not really a big deal.

Best wishes for success!

rosebarnalice · October 2021

While losing 60 lbs, I took several "maintenance breaks" when I increased my calorie goal to maintenance for anywhere from 3 days to a couple of weeks.

jamesha100 · October 2021

Thanks everyone for your responses. Lots of good, thought provoking stuff.

Maintenance eating recommendations

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