What happens after MFP

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Well this is a lifestyle change, hope you didn't think that you will do this once and be able to maintain it by not counting calories.

Oooh you can go and update your activity/lifestyle and current weight. You'll find out what your maintenance calories would be.

Edited: Sorry I misunderstood your question/complaint. There's a really good chance that there were more than 1800 calories at play there.

I'm guessing it doesn't end. Keeping off the weight you lose has to be a lifetime commitment. Just like quitting drinking or smoking, you can't just pick it up again after you've conquered it. So I guess you can splurge or treat yourself every once in while but we can't go back to eating how we did before. Or we'll end up gaining all the weight back again. It sucks....but there it is.

You didn't gain 2 lbs from food if you only ate 1800kCal a day and exercised too.. water weight. Think logically... a lb of fat is 3500kcal... 2 is 7000kCal... you didn't overeat 7000kCal. Quit worrying... its fluctuations!

(Hope this is coming across in the tone it's meant to - as in ...chill out your fine, bodies do things like this!)

Plus you're female which means large fluctuations too. Hard workouts make you retain water too. If you ate rubbish with loads of salt or sodium in too... that will have increased the amount of water you're storing.

Chill out, relax, you're still eating less than you're putting out.

I've been wondering the same thing. I didn't have time to log what I ate over the crazy Halloween weekend, but I don't feel like I topped 2000 calories per day yet somehow I gained a pound by Monday and another pound over the following week (despite exercising and mostly eating on track again). I hope it's water weight as a few people have said!

I followed the guidelines on here and lost about 5 lbs right away and then stalled. I was spinning every day for about 1 hour and my weight wouldn't move. I started reading about Tom Venuto and found his website. His philosophy is feed the muscle burn the fat. He thinks a diet that restricts calories to 1200 is way to low. He says the average woman's BMR is around 2150...just to maintain weight and that alot of people drop their calories so low that the body goes into starvation mode. Made sense to me. I was consuming 1200 calories in food and burning between 600 and 800 every day during spinning based my HRM. I bumped my calories back up to 1700, dropped my spinning back to 30 minutes and added some weight lifting. It took about one week for everything to start working again and over the weekend I lost 1.5 lbs, plus my energy has returned. I think there is a lot of science behind it and you just have to figure out what works for you. For me, moderation in cardio and moderation in calorie restriction seems to be working. Good luck!:bigsmile:

I completely understand where you are coming from. I get depressed at the idea that this is it. I am stuck at 1500 cals forever, just to maintain the weight I want to be. Just to maintain a healthy weight, really. I am not super thin at all, just in the middle of healthy.

the answer to your question is a simple Yes. You can never just eat whatever and expect your weight to be stable. You will always have to manage your weight. You can splurge once in a while but nor more than 1 or two times a week otherwise you will always gain weight again.
its not "water weight" whatever that is, but you can choose, whether you want to have those splurges then spend weeks "dieting" to take it back off again or whether you want to maintain a steady weight by not splurging and eating healthily but never have to "diet" again.

Uh, yea.. it is water weight.. you don't gain fat(IE actual weight) from splurges. Water weight comes on when you've had extra sodium since sodium makes you retain water.. and a lot of splurge foods are filled with sodium.

To gain a pound of fat you need to eat 3500 extra calories.. which means she would have had to have eaten 7,000 extra calories to gain those extra two pounds... which I'm sure she didn't do from the information given.

I splurge all the time on the weekends and have maintained my weight just fine because I know the weight gain in temporary and not real... She doesn't have to diet for weeks to take it back off again.. It normally drops in like a day or two.

Agreed, discounting science and resisting the existence of water weight from an excessive amount of sodium is . . . well I don't even have a word for that. If you don't believe in it you really should google it as I find that the more tools I have in my tool box regarding the way the human body works and reacts the eaiser it is to adjust my intake accordingly to maximize my desired results. Sodium is just like everything else, the human body requires it to function properly, and reacts to it in excess. Our bodies have fantastic ways of showing us where we need less of something or more of it.

I never weigh on Mondays because I allow myself weekends without logging most of the time. No, you will never be able to return to the lifestyle that you had before that got you here in the first place, eating in excess constantly and not moving will bare the same results as last time. However, you will be able to loosen up this lifestyle a little more at maintenance and allow for a larger net calorie. My maintenance calories are unfortunately low, however I make sure that I maintain an active lifestyle which allows me to eat anywhere from 1700 - 2200 caloires on any given exercise day. For me what I eat plays as important a role in my weightloss and maintenance as how much I eat, but only because I have a ton of allergies that impact my weight gain/loss.

You can have more calories on when just trying to maintain than you can when trying to lose. If you're set for say losing a lb a week, that means you can have about 500 calories more per day once you reach your goal weight.

You won't be able to go back to your old eating habits once you reach your target...or you'll go back to your old weight as well.

As another member said, that's likely water. Women retain a ton of water. But the fact is, when we eat a low calorie diet, we tend to gain weight after the initial loss. That's when we need to add calories --- like you did. Low calories only work for so long. You might want to buy the ebook, "Feed the Muscle, Burn the Fat by Tom Ventura. Or maybe it's the other way around. Anyway, google it. It's a terrific book about how to lose fat and, at the same time, feed the muscle.

Above all else, don't get discouraged. It's normal to put on a few pounds at times when you're female. It's not fair. But that's the way it is. I suggest you drink a lot of water and some green tea if you have it or can get it. Do some cardio but don't forget strength exercises.

You'll do fine.