44 pounds in 6 months!

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iqnas
iqnas Posts: 445 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I've lost about 44 pounds in 6 months. I started my weight loss journey at the end of September being around 176 pounds. Now, 6 months later, I weighed in at 132 pounds at the doctor's office! I'm 5'5'' and 19 years old, so 132 pounds is enough for me! Originally, my goal was only 140 pounds, but now I want to work on maintaining the 132 pounds.

For the first 3/4 months of calorie counting, I only ate about 1,200 calories. For the next 2/3 months, I slowly upped my calories to where I was eating about 1,500 a day (with occasional (once every 2 weeks) 'spike' days) Now that I want to maintain, I've got to bring my calories to at least 1,700. I've decided to do this all at once, (not slowly adding calories back in...)

Will this effect me in any way? Will I possibly gain weight while my metabolism 'steadies'? Will my past calorie restriction have made any restrictive changes on my metabolism?

I want to stay at 132 pounds, (don't mind gaining a few to balance my eating/metabolism) but will raising my calories to 1,700 at once make any drastic changes? I'm still exercising the same as I did before...(3x cardio a week)

Thank you all for any help/tips/comments you can give! :smile:

Replies

  • jessicaacampbell1
    jessicaacampbell1 Posts: 133 Member
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    Congratulations on your achievement. keep up the hard work and I'm sure you'll be able to maintain! Cheers :drinker:
  • MamaSonyaP
    MamaSonyaP Posts: 90 Member
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    Good question, I want to know as well. I'm not at the 'maintaining' stage at the moment, but I was wondering about this for down the road. Thanks for posting!
  • jsapninz
    jsapninz Posts: 909 Member
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    When I get to my goal weight, I have already decided I am going to up my daily cals by 100 a day until I get to my goal weight (at that time, my "current") TDEE.

    I think the only trouble you might run into upping your intake all at once is 1) your deficit eating may have slowed your metabolism SLIGHTLY (starvation mode is mostly a myth) and 2) Your natural TDEE might be slightly lower than the average for your weight and height.

    Either way, you are going to have to play around with your maintenance intake a little, but as you know, any gain will be "fixable," and frankly small potatoes compared to how much you have lost. After I gradual up to my goal weight TDEE, I plan to stay on using MFP for a couple weeks just to make sure I am on the right maintenance track, and then I will just use the scale as a guide for the long term, and Iif I need to hop back on MFP for a few lbs, no big deal!

    Congratulations on your massive trasformation!! It is so great that you have gotten to your (healthy!!!) goal weight. Keep it up, don't ever let yourself go back there! :flowerforyou:

    Also note, your weight loss was a bit on the agreesive side (44 lbs in 24 weeks), so you might want to be EXTRA careful about sticking with your maintenance for awhile, probably at least a month. Be careful, you DON'T want to yo-yo.
  • Hoakiebs
    Hoakiebs Posts: 430 Member
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    Not unless you do it all with Cheetos, like in your profile pic!
  • iqnas
    iqnas Posts: 445 Member
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    .
  • iqnas
    iqnas Posts: 445 Member
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    Not unless you do it all with Cheetos, like in your profile pic!

    LOL! That USED to be me. The only difference now is cheetos are replaced with bananas! :)
  • iqnas
    iqnas Posts: 445 Member
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    When I get to my goal weight, I have already decided I am going to up my daily cals by 100 a day until I get to my goal weight (at that time, my "current") TDEE.

    I think the only trouble you might run into upping your intake all at once is 1) your deficit eating may have slowed your metabolism SLIGHTLY (starvation mode is mostly a myth) and 2) Your natural TDEE might be slightly lower than the average for your weight and height.

    Either way, you are going to have to play around with your maintenance intake a little, but as you know, any gain will be "fixable," and frankly small potatoes compared to how much you have lost. After I gradual up to my goal weight TDEE, I plan to stay on using MFP for a couple weeks just to make sure I am on the right maintenance track, and then I will just use the scale as a guide for the long term, and Iif I need to hop back on MFP for a few lbs, no big deal!

    Congratulations on your massive trasformation!! It is so great that you have gotten to your (healthy!!!) goal weight. Keep it up, don't ever let yourself go back there! :flowerforyou:

    Also note, your weight loss was a bit on the agreesive side (44 lbs in 24 weeks), so you might want to be EXTRA careful about sticking with your maintenance for awhile, probably at least a month. Be careful, you DON'T want to yo-yo.



    1,700 calories is SLIGHTLY less than what MFP recommended (1,720) and what other sites recommended (1,720-1,770) for maintenance. I know my metabolism might be a little slower, so that's why I'm 'safely' assuming my maintenance is 1,700. It's only about 200 calories more than I used to eat before, so I'm not worried about the 'slowly' adding in part.

    The only main issue I'm concerned with is not gaining a whole bunch when trying to maintain, but your post nicely breaks everything down and explains it.

    Thank you for the wonderful advice! Let's hope I can maintain now :) I'll start by eating 1,700 for at least a month and seeing how my body adjusts to that! :)
  • mikedhatz
    mikedhatz Posts: 15
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    Way to go! Lot of good advice on here, and I'm glad to read that other people are aware of the "starvation mode" deal being largely mythical. I don't know where that started, but it's not true.

    Sorry for the tangent, glad to read about your success!
  • cynthiaj777
    cynthiaj777 Posts: 787 Member
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    You have done amazing work! Congratulations.

    Have you considered getting a Polar HRM? I was eating 1200 calories to begin with. Then I upped it to 1340 calories in order to fix my metabolism.

    To my surprise, only a daily, normal basis (I have a desk job), I was burning upwards of 3000 calories a day without exercise. So, I willing put my calorie intake to 1450 (on weekends, since I normally don't exercise, when I sit around all day, my normal burn is around 1400). When I exercise, I burn around 600 calories an hour.

    I suggest getting a HRM that counts your calorie expenditure. You can wear it for a week or so then average your burning. You can then reassess your maintenance calories. I guarantee you, you are, by far, undereating. Everyone kept telling me to up my calories, but I just couldn't do it. My HRM proved I was really undereating.

    You could probably be eating close to 2000 to maintain. And days with exercise, you can eat that much more.

    Message me if you want more info.
  • iqnas
    iqnas Posts: 445 Member
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    You have done amazing work! Congratulations.

    Have you considered getting a Polar HRM? I was eating 1200 calories to begin with. Then I upped it to 1340 calories in order to fix my metabolism.

    To my surprise, only a daily, normal basis (I have a desk job), I was burning upwards of 3000 calories a day without exercise. So, I willing put my calorie intake to 1450 (on weekends, since I normally don't exercise, when I sit around all day, my normal burn is around 1400). When I exercise, I burn around 600 calories an hour.

    I suggest getting a HRM that counts your calorie expenditure. You can wear it for a week or so then average your burning. You can then reassess your maintenance calories. I guarantee you, you are, by far, undereating. Everyone kept telling me to up my calories, but I just couldn't do it. My HRM proved I was really undereating.

    You could probably be eating close to 2000 to maintain. And days with exercise, you can eat that much more.

    Message me if you want more info.

    Thank you! I will look into getting an HRM. I'll be messaging you shortly :)

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