The Fat Loss TroubleshootThis is your place to troubleshoot your fat loss problems from nutrition to training. This section is led by Leigh Peele, author of "The Fat Loss Troubleshoot," the ultimate fat loss manual. If your results have slowed or stalled this is the place to come for advice for all your fat loss needs.
I've moved in the past month to maintenence phase, as I am happy with my scale weight and I'm trying to work on normalizing my hormones. I pretty much stayed the same weight for the first couple weeks, the scale went down a little last week, and then has been bouncing around lately (up a pound, down a pound, etc).
I was just wondering if during maintenance if this is what most people experience. Before anyone comments, I am TOTALLY aware that food weighs something, and increased glycogen will make my scale weight go up so I won't maintain my "low point". That is fine with me, I purposely went about 2 pounds below what my target was because of this.
My question is more do others experience this kind of up/down movement overtime during maintenance. I was wondering if it is more water retention problems, could I be more sensitive now to workouts and retaining water since I am taking in much more calories?
any feedback on prior experience for those maintaining would be appreciated. I have re-read Leigh's maintenence manual a few times, but don't really have a feel for if this is expected.
I can only speak for myself, but yes, I do see my weight bouncing up and down. By more than a lb even. Some of this is due to eating too much and then cutting back again, and some is just due to random crap, IMO.
I was just updating my weight loss graph, so I'll post it here and you can see what mine maintenance is looking like. The first vertical line is when I reached my WW official goal, and the second line is when I made lifetime. On WW you are supposed to maintain for 6 weeks after making goal. So the area between the 2 lines is maintenance. After that I decided to lose some more, and now am maintaining again. A vacation did occur during that time, lol, so that explains one of the big jumps in weight. Oh, and the red line is total weight loss, and the blue line is weight loss (or gain) from the previous week). The vertical axis is lbs lost, and the horizontal axis is the week.
Depending on the degree of deficit and how much fat you lost will usually depend on how long it takes for you to adjust to your maintenance level.
For example, a person who lost 15 pounds of fat/muscle (perhaps 5-10 pounds of water) is going to have a different reaction than someone who lost 80 pounds of fat/muscle (perhaps 20-25 pounds of water).
How much of that water is going to come back, how you normally eat, how different your activity is, etc is all going to make a different as to what that final goal is.
If you moved a lot to lose the fat, but then slowed down once it is going, not only are your maintenance calories going to be lower, but your water need and expenditure is going to be lower. There are a lot of variables.
The best thing to do is to eat like you really want to eat. Meaning if you want to salt up your food and have no carb restrictions, go for it. Gauge how much you gain, how much water you need, how long it takes for you to resettle, and how you like the look.
If you take in more salt then make sure to take in more potassium/calcium and get more water AND more movement. If you aren't going to do those things, watch the salt and don't use so much because you don't need it/earn it.
As you are going along remember to take some low days every so often to balance things out. If you are doing things right it should take a while to really figure things out, otherwise you will notice a trend going up/down pretty easily.
If you realized that you didn't go low enough to meet the demands of your lifestyle, just go a little lower in your fat loss, and start all over.
Thanks for both of your posts. That helps to clear things up; for some reason I'm struggling more with this phase than the fat loss phase.
I admit I never thought I'd say this, but upping my calories this past month has been a little scary, but I'm happy to say that everything happened as you predicted Leigh by following the principles of the MRM, no real weight gain (bouncing up/down a pound but that's about it). I'm eating about 2100 calories a day at this point, when I was dieting I was doing about 1300/1400 5 days a week, so that's pretty significant increase.
I just got a GWF, and it has been reading about 2700 -2900 calories per day; if you take into account the potential 15% discrepency, I'm getting pretty close to what my calories should be. I'm adding in another 100 this week to see how it works out for me. I'm thinking my number I need to hit is around 2300-2400, as my GWF numbers are showing my burn significantly higher than I had calculated (I had calculated around 2100, I'm 5'5 at 130 pounds).
Maintenance can be scary. Plus, you are not getting that 'reward' every week of seeing the numbers go down. It can be so weird to see the number go up a little and have to convince yourself that it's okay. Cause during maintenance, face it, the numbers have to go up some of the time. They are not going to be exactly the same every week.
What Leigh said up there about it taking some time is definitely true for me. Even now, about 16 weeks or so into real maintenance I feel like I am still learning what my body needs.
If you are female and still cycling you'll want to watch over a couple of cycles to see the what your new normal ebb and flow will be at various points of your cycle. If you lost all your weight on a different type of eating (e.g. very few bread products) you might want to take note of any effects (like bloating) of bread or cereal products. Or a few beers or a saltier meal than you have been used to.
Question - people's experience with maintenence
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