How To Determine Your Maintenance Calories

How To Determine Maintenance Calories

I would use a generic Total Daily Energy Expenditure calculator like this one Calorie Calculator

Now you have your starting calories it's time to spend at least 3 weeks consuming on average this number of calories 

If your weight continually goes down then you are in a deficit so add in 100-200 more calories until your weight stabilises for a couple of weeks. The same if it's constantly going up in that first 10 days. We only want to see minor fluctuations and that the average over time is the same.

If you are already tracking and you know what your deficit calories are it's time to increase them to the point that your weight stabilises. As a rule of thumb I add 200-300 calories and we monitor and adapt until your weight stabilises.

Maintenance is where you should spend most of the year, a fat loss phase should be 12-16 weeks, leaving you the rest of the year to work on improving your strength, body composition and your other fitness goals.

By spending the majority of the year at maintenance or a slight surplus (if you want to maximise your ability to grow more muscle) your body will adapt so that when and if you want to enter a fat loss phase your calories are in a good place when you start to gradually drop them. 

If you have NEVER mastered a Maintenance Phase of 6 months or longer then this must be done first before you even consider a fat loss phase.

Your good habits need to be totally dialled in. Things like:

• Lifting weights regularly (at least 3 times a week)
• Eating enough protein every day
• Having a good relationship with food, by that I mean total food freedom
• Not being at all bothered by scale fluctuations
• Averaging 7,000-10,000 steps per week, routinely

When you first come up to Maintenance, yes, your weight is going to go up but please remember this is not FAT! This is a mixture of:

• Increased food volume
• Increased water as a result of increased food volume 
• Increased glycogen, as your body can store more carbohydrate in your liver and muscles.

There are all temporary and once you start regularly eating at maintenance your body weight will in fact be "maintained" Maintenance is just that, you are maintaining your body weight, not increasing it over time.

By staying at Maintenance for large periods of time, you allow your body to restore healthy metabolic function. You need to take breaks from fat loss phases to allow this to happen.

Ideally you will spend twice as long in a Maintenance phase as you would a fat loss phase. So a 3 month fat loss phase is followed my 6 months at Maintenance x