Maintaining weight

[HarryStotle]

This is an unusual post in that I want to maintain my weight, not increase or lose it! I have been on a diet since the start of this year and have been very successful in losing 4 stone to reach my target weight. To achieve that I have been limiting myself to around 1100-1200 cals/day and increasing my exercise with regular walks. This has enabled me to regularly lose between 1.5 and 2 lbs every week consistently. So far so good you may say! However having reached my goal I now want to maintain it. I don't particularly want to lose any more and I certainly don't want to put any on but how to go about this. You may say just increase your daily intake. However when I start to do this, even by a couple of hundred cals (to around 1400), I start to put on a couple of pounds! Now I've read that I should be eating around 2000 cals a day and I was rather hoping that, having got to my ideal weight, I could start increasing my diet to more like that amount. When I've tried calculating my resting metabolism I seem to get a figure of around 1500 so I would have thought that eating around 1500-2000 cals wouldn't cause a problem but, as I say, it seems to be that by increasing my food intake (same foods, just bigger portions) is having an adverse affect on weight. Does anyone have any ideas?

[Zenette]

Can't say I have experience in not wanting to lose weight! But maybe you just need to experiment more until you find the solution. E g . what if you increase your intake by increments of 100 cal at a time, say 100cal a day for a few days, then 100 more and so on. Maybe increasing it by a few hundred at a time was too much of a surprise for your body!

[Penel]

It's not just about calories, the kind of food you eat is important, because different foods have different effects on the body. Have you increased protein, vegetables/fruits, or carbohydrates like bread? You could try experimenting with different foods, it's going to be a balancing act I guess.

I would suggest that increasing protein and veg would probably be a better bet than increasing things like bead and cereal, but your body will let you know!

[Jlmitch]

I agree with Penel, you should try not to increase carbohydrate or sugar intake. Eat more protein, vegetables (not potatoes) and good fats (eating fat does not make you fat as long as it is good fat). The body tries to regain weight if you have restricted calories over a period of time and your metabolic rate will have lowered in response to the calorie reduction so you need to restrict the foods that the body can easily turn into fat - that is restrict sugar and carbohydrates.

This is from a series of very good articles which reference scientific studies on problems with trying to lose weight by just counting calories - the type of food is more important than the number of calories.

intensivedietarymanagement....

[gingernut49]

I've maintained my weight loss (three stone) since April 2013 by 'fasting' one day a week (up to 500 calories). I lost my weight on the 5:2 Diet youtu.be/W9Aj6hRYg4A(Not working as expected?) where you 'fast' two non-consecutive days a week. I shall be doing this for the rest of my life as it has been proved to minimise the risks of cancer, diabetes and dementia - win-win!

[gilly57]

If your BMR says 1500 per day and you go to 2000, that's simply 3500 excess calories a week (unless you're exercising to a) increase MR or b) to burn off above BMR.) If you go to 2000 one day try to be aware of that and drop some the following. Not as drastic or regimented as the fasting 2 days a week thing and more manageable. You've done so well so far, so well, that you can control your intake (you've proved it!) I assume you've been eating the right foods to get this far, so why would you want to break that lifestyle choice? Absolutely all the best. I hope I end up in your situation!

[Jlmitch]

It isn't all about calories, the type of food is important: example - huffingtonpost.co.uk/sam-fe...