Maintenance Calories
You are not meant to be living in a dieting phase your entire life. If you are or have no idea if you are it’s time to listen up!
If you have been chronically dieting or find yourself stuck without results and have been attempting calorie deficit for awhile I would 1st start with a FULL panel of blood work to make sure sure we are working with a full deck here. Many physicians will give push back on labs. May have to pay out of pocket but highly worth knowing. Life Extension (@lifeextension) has a “weight loss panel” that pretty much has everything that needs assessed and addressed. Do yourself a favor and know roughly what your maintenance should be by looking at an online TDEE calculator. (This is low end calories for many)
Secondly it’s time to track your food and take a hard look at what you are actually consuming. Many are quite comfortable living off way less than what their projected TDEE should be, but that doesn’t make it right. And just because we are maintaining our weight doesn’t mean we are eating at a true maintenance for ourselves.
Eating in maintenance is where our body is happiest. It doesn’t have to make decisions like do I give energy to their lungs to breathe or their reproductive system? (Lungs win 😜) It can do both. Stop chronically stressing your body out. Some of you won’t eat this or that because it’s “so harmful to your body” but you have no problem under feeding it for years?! 🧐
Some have lived in this state for so long they don’t even know what normal feels like. Well let me tell you because I get messages from peeps on here EVERY DAY telling me...energy improves, sleeping easier, less irritation/anxiety, improved sex drive, more food freedom and how about being able to finally build some muscle?! 💪🏻 Sign me up.
There is a time and a place for diets and fat loss, and they should be very short. Many need to flip flop their time spent dieting vs time maintaining. And going into maintenance does not mean gaining everything back we lost either. The longer and more time spent maintaining the easier you will respond to deficit. That’s a whole other post! Check out any of my reverse dieting posts or IGTV videos. ❤️SC