Maintenance Levels?

Hi Tracy,

I will be turning the big 5-0 this September.  I am 5'3-1/2" and weigh between 113-115.  Right now I'm carrying 2 extra pounds that I'm working on getting rid of. Holidays and now a broken toe have me out of my routine.

I normally try to stay under 1100 cals, 60+ of protein, but I do this only during the week.  On the weekends I allow myself to eat and drink off plan.  I do exercise almost daily(before the toe incident) either spinning or cycling and a bit of running here and there.  If I don't eat off plan on the weekends I can continue losing.  If I don't reel it in during the week, I will gain.  I'm almost 6 years out and I weigh less consistently now than when I first hit maintenance, so it is doable.

Good luck finding your balance :)

It's good to see that some one so far out is still doing the diet it gives me some hope to get back on track

As you can see, there can still be a fairly wide variation in results even amongst ladies of similar size and age.

You can get a guesstimate or SWAG (scientific wild-a$$ed guess) by looking at your later months' loss rate. For instance, as I got to six months and within 10 lb of goal, I had been losing 10 lb per month the the prior three months, which works out to a caloric deficit of a little over 1100 calories per day (10 lb/month divided by 30 days, multiplied by 3500 calories per pound) and this worked out pretty close as I was losing at around 1100 calories per day and am now maintaining at around 2100, That told me that I had room to start increasing things before getting to goal to slow things down a bit, and that I could go beyond the typically advised 100 cal/day steps in finding my stability level, taking a couple of bigger initial steps before narrowing it down to smaller steps.

In your case, you have been averaging about 7 lb/month your last three months, which works out to about 800 cal per day deficit; your last month at 4 lb (which may be lower than your later average due to the holidays, or the normal slowdown as we get lighter,) works out to about 450 calories per day. So, it looks like you will wind up somewhere between 450 and 800 calories per day higher than you have been doing - call it around 600 up for a first guess.

Good luck in this new world called maintenance!