3 Steps to Calculating Your Maintenance Calories After a Diet

​At the age of thirty-seven, I was fat, and since the age of thirty-eight, I have never been fat again. That’s the whole idea of effective weight loss – it’s permanent because it’s part of your lifestyle and the way you think about yourself, with pride and a sense of accomplishment. The goal you achieve is your own – you own it.
––Jean Nidetch

All the diets that work, have one characteristic in common: a calorie deficit.
 
By definition, a calorie deficit is a state in which you’re eating fewer calories than you’re expending to keep your body alive, go about your daily activities, and exercise. This is how you can lose body fat over time.
 
Once you achieve your fat loss goal and want to maintain your weight, then you don’t need to stay in a deficit. You now need to achieve calorie balance, or a state in which your calorie intake (food) matches your output (survival, daily activities, and exercise).
 
To accomplish this, you need to increase the amount of calories you’re eating. Hurray!
 
However, if you increase them too much, you can accidentally get into a calorie surplus, which is the opposite of a deficit and will cause fat gain.
 
So by how much should you increase your calories without regaining weight?
 
In this article, I’m going to teach you a three-step method to calculate your maintenance calories for when you’re done with your diet, or when you want to take a temporary break from it.
 
I take this approach with myself and all my clients to ensure they not only drop fat, but also maintain those hard-earned results.

How to calculate your maintenance calories
 
Step 1. Work out your average rate of loss (ROL) using the last four weeks of your fat loss diet.
 
Let’s use this example:
 

• In Week 1, you lost 0.4 lb.
• In Week 2, you lost 0.6 lb.
• In Week 3, you lost 0.4 lb again.
• In Week 4, you lost 0.7 lb.

 
Add up these four numbers to get the total loss over the four-week period:
 
0.4 + 0.6 + 0.4 + 0.7 = 2.1 lbs total loss
 
Then divide the total loss by 4 to get the weekly rate of loss:
 
2.1 / 4 = 0.5 lb weekly loss
 
Based on these calculations, every week you lost an average of 0.5 lb. This is your ROL.
 
Step 2. Multiply your ROL by 3500.
 
A common rule of thumb is that 1 lb of fat equals 3500 calories. This isn’t strictly correct, but it’s still a useful heuristic that yields pretty accurate results.
 
By multiplying your ROL by 3500, you get your weekly calorie deficit:
 
0.5 * 3500 = 1750 calories
 
In other words, for the past four weeks, you ate 1750 calories less than your weekly maintenance calories. Therefore, 1750 calories is your weekly calorie deficit.
 
If you’ve been losing fat eating around 1700 calories per day for the last four weeks, you can multiply this number by 7 to get your weekly fat loss calories:
 
1700 * 7 = 11 900
 
You then add 1750 calories to this number to work out your weekly maintenance calories:
 
11 900 + 1750 = 13 650 calories
 
Step 3. Once you know your weekly maintenance calories, divide this number by the seven days of the week to get your daily maintenance calories:
 
13 650 / 7 = 1950 calories per day
 
Based on these calculations, you can increase your current daily calorie target from 1700 to 1950 without fear of regaining body fat.
 
An alternative method:
 
Take the weekly calorie deficit calculated in Step 2 (1750 calories) and divide it by the seven days of the week to get your daily calorie deficit:
 
1750 / 7 = 250 calories
 
Every day, you were eating 250 calories less than your maintenance, so you can add this number to your current daily fat loss goal (1700 calories):
 
1700 + 250 = 1950 calories
 
If the math totally went over your head, send me an email at fittotransform@gmail.com and I’ll do it for you.
 
What can you expect when you increase calories to maintenance levels?
 
As weird as it sounds, you won’t regain body fat (otherwise, by definition, you wouldn’t be in a state of maintenance calories), but your weight can still go up.
 
The increase is due to the following factors:
 

• You’re eating more food than in a calorie deficit, so you’re also holding more food in your gut;
• You’re eating more carbs, each gram of which is absorbed and stored as glycogen along with 3 to 4 gr of water. For example, if you’re eating an extra 100 gr of carbs at maintenance, you’ll be holding an extra 300 to 400 gr of water, too.

 
So don’t panic!
 
In general, if you’ve estimated your maintenance calories correctly, then this initial weight increase will stabilise after a few days to a week.
 
If you keep gaining weight, then you’re likely in a small calorie surplus.
 
If that’s the case, adjust your calories downwards for a few days at a time until your weight starts fluctuating up and down within a small range.
 
How do you know you’re maintaining weight successfully?
 
Most people won’t maintain the exact same weight. For instance, it’s unlikely you’ll be exactly 150 lbs year after year. Successful maintenance is the maintenance of your weight within a range of a few pounds, which I call your weight maintenance range.
 
There’s no “best” weight maintenance range for everyone. For instance, I couldn’t say, “Everyone should maintain their weight within 10 lbs”.
 
Instead, you can define your own weight maintenance range based on the way you feel:
 

• When you’re dropping below the lower end of this range, you’re going to feel more tired, irritable, and hungrier than usual. You can also become more focused on food outside of meal times and more critical of your own appearance, even though you’re not carrying excess body fat. These are physical and psychological signs that you may have become leaner than your body is comfortable with;
• On the other hand, overshooting your weight maintenance range often happens as a result of eating less nutritious food than is ideal for you, so you may notice that your digestion is struggling, your skin is more oily, and you feel sluggish and overall less “healthy”. The increase in body fat can also make you feel uncomfortable about the way you look.

 
Therefore, your weight maintenance range is the range within which you feel your best in your own skin: on average, you have good energy, stable moods and hunger levels, and a balanced body image.
 
Do you need to recalculate your maintenance calories if you knew what they were before you started the diet?
 
The short answer is yes.
 
If you’ve been dieting for a long time and you’ve lost a considerable amount of body fat, your maintenance calories will be lower than before you started the diet.
 
The main reason is that a bigger body needs more energy to stay alive, carry out daily tasks, and exercise than a smaller body. So, after a successful diet, you won’t need as many calories to maintain your new, lower bodyweight as you did before you started.
 
That’s why I recommend you recalculate your maintenance calories using the last four weeks of your diet. With these recent data, you’ll be more likely to estimate your maintenance calories correctly and avoid unwanted fat regain.
 
Practical Applications
 

1. When you’re done dieting or want to take a break from it, use your rate of loss from the last four weeks of the diet to get the most accurate estimation of your current maintenance calories.
2. If your calculation is correct, your bodyweight is likely to increase in the first few days to a week, then stabilise within a relatively small range.
3. Your maintenance calories pre-diet are unlikely to be the same post-diet. A smaller body burns less energy, so you’ll likely maintain your new bodyweight on fewer calories.

 
Thanks for reading. May you make the best gains.
 
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