Maintaining after reaching goal

As I approached my goal weight, I increased slowly over a few months. That method worked for me, but you really can do whatever you feel comfortable doing.

It actually took awhile before my weight loss slowed, so I'm guessing that extra calories just increased my daily activity, although the change wasn't perceptible to me.

I would recommend continuing to track food, at least during the transition. Personally, I still track everything two years later and have easily maintained.

The thing to realise about reaching your goal weight and maintenance is that it is not a final goal. Maintaining will involve ups and downs – think of a 5 lb or 2kg range. You will be constantly adjusting your diet (way of eating) depending on circumstances. I reached my goal in April 2019, knowing that I had holidays coming up (I’m retired so have a lot of holidays) so I carried on being careful when at home and relaxed a bit on holiday or when out with friends. My weight bounces around a bit but has been within my goal range for nearly 3 years now.

You need to find a way of eating and way of life that you can sustain for years – the rest of your life?

As with most things about weight management, I don't think there's "One True Best Way" to go into maintenance. It's IMO about what you think will work best for you.

I'd already been tapering my calorie deficit as I approached maintenance, wanting to lose faster at first when I had plenty left to lose, and slower at the end with only a few pounds left, because I think that's generally more health-promoting than trying to lose fast all the way. (Losing slowly the whole way is fine from a health standpoint, but I'm more impatient than that, so I just tried to keep loss rate sensible given how much I had left to lose.)

So, by the end, I was striving to lose around half a pound a week, on average. In practice, it was probably a bit faster than that, but in the ballpark. From there, I added calories a hundred or so at a time, monitored my weight to see how fast I was still losing, if losing at all. If still losing after a couple of weeks, I'd add another small increment. Each successive increment, I had to wait longer to see the effect on body fat, in amongst daily water retention fluctuations.

For me, that was better than adding 250+ calories daily all at once. I know myself! If I'd added a big chunk of calories at once, the temptation would've been strong to add some single big daily treat, like beer/wine with every dinner, or carrot cake, or somesuch thing. There's nothing wrong with those foods, but I didn't want to construct a habit of eating them daily. By adding in smaller increments, I was more likely to add small, enjoyable, nutritious tweaks to my eating. That worked well for me.

I don't think everyone needs to do it that way. In fact, if someone is still losing fast toward the end, there's a good argument for adding a bigger increment of calories at first, to slow that bus down.

I agree with sijomial that reading in the Maintaining Weight part of the Community is good preparation for maintenance. I learned a lot that way. A good place to start might be the Most Helpful Posts section there. Here's a direct link to that:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10300324/most-helpful-posts-goal-maintaining-weight-must-reads#latest