Eating at Maintenance… and why I wish everyone with a body composition or health goal would figure it out
When you stand on a scale has it been the same weight, plus or minus 5 pounds, the last year, or 6 months?
If so, you’re most likely eating at maintenance. In other words, the average calorie amount you’ve been eating has produced the number on the scale.
Clients have goals. Losing weight and putting on muscle are the goals that come up most often when people hire me for help. Clients wanting to lose weight ask for a daily calorie deficit amount they can plug into a food app, like My Fitness Pal, and want to start tracking their food immediately to lose the weight. For muscle gain, my recommendation is usually to remain at their current maintenance calories, with a big focus on their training intensity, volume, frequency and recovery. They could also choose to eat at a slight surplus if they wanted to go that route, as building muscle requires energy(food).
The internet is full of calorie calculators. A person can plug in basic information and the calculator will spit out a daily calorie amount for whatever goal is trying to be reached.
Coaches can use an InBody scale BMR (basal metabolic rate) result to arrive at an informed guess at what a client’s current maintenance, deficit, or surplus might be.
The next step is to begin consistently tracking at that amount and see what happens.
WHAT I LIKE INSTEAD…
I encourage all clients to spend 2 weeks meticulously weighing, measuring and tracking what they’re CURRENTLY eating. This gives individualized data, because it truly represents them…it wouldn’t be an educated guess from a calculator or a weigh-in. If much of what they’ve entered is food they enjoy and would like to continue eating, then we may need to only manipulate the AMOUNTS of the food depending on their goal.
The ideal scenario would be continuing to track at maintenance for 6 months or more to establish the habit before beginning a deficit for fat loss, or for any goal.
Sounds simple...just track your food for 2 weeks in an app? The reality is, I haven’t had much luck convincing clients to do it. Maybe it’s my coaching? I have found there’s no convincing in nutrition. People are either open to it, or they are not. I get it…weighing, measuring and tracking your food in an app takes time. But, what’s the alternative? It’s staying exactly where you are.
Collect daily calorie data to determine maintenance calories. Maintenance calories are the baseline. By knowing the baseline, a system can be set-up to reach the goal.
Figuring out your maintenance calories can be done on your own, without a trainer or coach!
