Need advice on how to flip the mental switch of 'I aim to lose' to 'I need to maintain'

By the way, afterthought: In your OP, you write

"I learned from these forums (and elsewhere) ages ago to just not eat my workout calories and I think I just struggle to do it now. I think my mind is still struggling with the idea that I want to eat enough for 'growth' in a way."

I have to say, that made exclamation points stand out all around my head.

Yes, elsewhere, people are told not to eat exercise calories. That can be good or bad advice, depending on a bunch of other factors.

But MFP is literally designed with the idea in mind that we will eat back exercise calories. It intends us to set our activity level in our profile excluding intentional exercise. It gives us a starting calorie goal that includes a calorie deficit to trigger weight loss. Then it intends we'll log exercise when we do some, and eat those calories, too. Assuming correct estimates all around, that keeps our calorie deficit the same, so keeps us at the same calorie deficit, exercise or no exercise. That teaches the useful lesson "move more, eat more; move less, eat less".

Yes, there are other ways to do it. Some of them don't consider exercise calories separately. But the difference is the calorie accounting method, just arithmetic, not some profound secret to success.

In one sense, exercise calories aren't different from the calories we burn at work, while doing home chores . . . even the calories we burn just being alive, breathing and with a heartbeat. They're all calories we burn.

If we literally "don't eat back exercise calories" we lose weight faster than we would if we did the same routine excluding that exercise, and ate the same number of calories we'd been eating. Losing weight faster isn't necessarily a good thing. And more specifically, significantly undereating when exercise is part of the picture is counter-productive for both fitness improvement and health. A sensible calorie deficit can be fine, when overweight. A huge calorie deficit is what's counter-productive.

At goal weight, any calorie deficit is counter-productive, and it still doesn't matter how we do the arithmetic to count the calories. But we need to eat them all.

I think that's where you are now: Needing to accept that improving fitness - strength, cardiovascular fitness, or any other fitness dimension - requires fuel. At goal weight, that means eating at goal calories . . . as a minimum.

For strength gains, eating in a tiny surplus is even better, but many of us with a history of being fat don't want to go that route. We don't want to risk needing to re-lose a small number of pounds later, even as a planned life-course. I get that. Eating at - not over - maintenance calories will mean slower strength/muscle gains, but there will be some. Continuing the deficit, gains will definitely suffer, and so will health.

FWIW, I ate every single carefully-estimated exercise calorie while losing weight, and lost at a good pace, obese to healthy weight. I'm far, far from the only person here who did that.

Like I said, even though a person can use it in other ways, eating exercise calories is what MFP is designed to support, unlike some other tools. It works fine, when understood and practiced correctly. I've done the same in maintenance for 9+ years since loss, and stayed at a healthy weight . . . when exercising lots, but also when exercising not at all during things like illness, surgical recovery, healing injuries, etc. I was overweight/obese for around 30 years before weight loss, BTW.

Eating the right number of calories is key to health. During loss, that's sensibly moderate deficit calories. At goal weight, that's at minimum maintenance calories. How you account for the calories - exercise calories added on or averaged in - that doesn't matter, that's just the arithmetic. But however the accounting is done, eating the right number of calories is what really matters.

Yep, that's human to be surprised, irritated, etc., when something like that happens. 😉 But it's also a form of learning, right?

Another thing that's human - happens for many people, though not all - is increasing calories and not seeing the expected weight stabilization, but instead seeing continuing loss.

For one, I hope you're increasing calories based not on what MFP, some other calculator or a fitness tracker says, but rather increasing based on your last month-ish of weight loss. For each pound lost on average per week in the last few weeks of steady weight loss, plan to add 500 calories daily.

You don't have to add them all at once - I didn't, because knowing myself, I figured I'd be more likely to fill those calories with some big daily treat food, and that wasn't really what I wanted. I added 100-200 daily, watched the scale, added more in a couple of weeks or so if the scale still seemed to be dropping, and just kept going until weight stabilized. Adding 100 calories at a time, I knew that if I overshot maintenance calories, it'd take me over a month to add a pound of fat. I wasn't stressed about that, because I know how to lose a pound if necessary. 😆

Secondly, about that experience of losing while adding calories, more generically: I hope you're recognizing that calorie balance is dynamic. Calorie intake affects calorie output.

Some people begin to burn more calories when eating more than they burned when in a significant deficit. That can be subtle - things like core body temperature increasing, hair growth picking up again, perked-up immune system, etc. . . . but it can also be noticeable - things like a bit more spontaneous movement (twitchiness and more, like shifting posture more when sitting), better exercise performance, wanting to spend more time on non-exercise active hobbies, gaining enthusiasm to start some effortful home project, etc. Maybe even a disinclination to normal sleep at first? 😉

From reading posts here over nearly a decade, plus some more limited scientific research results I've read, it seems like some people are more likely to see more of that kind of adjustment, compared to others. You may be one whose body is a little more likely or quicker to up-regulate when given more calories to work with. It's not guaranteed, but it's possible.

I don't see a problem with you posting internal monologues here. In fact, I think it could help others reading here who may be too shy or reticent to post. If some of those readers feel a little broken in a similar situation, you're helping them even though they may never tell you.

You can delete your post, but I hope you won't, because I think it's a good and useful set of questions/perceptions. To delete, look just below your OP. Click on "Flag", then "Report". In the box that pops up, click "This is my post and I want to delete it", then click "Send Report". It won't disappear instantly, but it a while the moderators will delete it. That works for our own posts, whether our own whole thread, or our reply on someone else's thread.

Like I said, though, I hope you won't delete this, because I think it's a good question, and can help others.

Can't remember whether we mentioned these things on the other thread, too lazy to look:

If not already using one, you might like trying a weight trending app. There are free options. Some commonly used ones are Happy Scale for Apple/iOS, Libra for Android, Trendweight (which IMU requires a free Fitbit account, but not a device), Weightgrapher. I'm sure there are others, too. They're not magical: They just use fancy statistical techniques, usually some type of weighted average, to try to suss out the trend of bodyweight from amongst the noise of daily weight fluctuations that are about water/waste differences. They can mislead, but they can also make what's happening a little clearer than just looking at raw weigh-in data.

Also, on the NEAT front, I may've already linked this, because I often do:

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10610953/neat-improvement-strategies-to-improve-weight-loss/p1

If I didn't, don't let the title scare you off. As you know, NEAT can help with maintenance, too.

I'm also assuming you may already know about the US National Weight Control Registry, and the research around it about what seems to help sustain a reduced body weight:

http://www.nwcr.ws/

It's really common to struggle a bit when easing into Maintenance. I went up and down several pounds in that first year post weight loss trying to find the sweet (or not so sweet) spot.

Be kind to you. You're standing on holy ground. Great achievement. Celebrate that! Pats on the back encouraged!