You’ve just finished your 12-week dieting phase and now you’re wondering, what to do when you finish dieting?
Firstly, congrats on completing your dieting phase. It’s always a big success when people achieve a goal. But then you’re left wondering what to do when you finish dieting?
How do you maintain the weight you’ve just lost and keep it off?
If you’re on social media you see the hottest trend right now is “reverse dieting”.
Reverse dieting is basically scaremongering from coaches who have no idea what they’re talking about.
Reverse Dieting Doesn’t Work
Here’s why reverse dieting is a waste of time
“Apparently” if you straight out of a diet and to maintenance you’re going to magically gain fat.
So instead, you slowly increase your calories each week by like 50 or something stupid until you find out what your maintenance is.
If you have just finished dieting and now you have to reverse out, it’s going to be a waste of time.
Instead of dieting for 12–16 weeks, you’re dieting for 20–24 weeks
Every week you’re dragging this process longer than it needs to be.
Every week you’re not eating at maintenance calories is another week of food focus.
Another week of being hungry
– Not performing better in the gym,
– Hormones still being out of whack
– Feeling Sluggish
– Being a moody bugger
It’s just not worth it and it’s a waste of time!
Maintenance Means Maintaining Your Weight
So what to do if you’ve finished dieting? Go straight to your new predicted maintenance.
Maintenance is called maintenance for a reason.
You’re not in a surplus, you’re eating at maintenance calories.
That means you’ll maintain your body weight.
Gaining fat shouldn’t be an issue if you eat at maintenance calories.
Will you gain weight at maintenance calories?
Yes, but it’s not fat. This will be because of the extra food in your stomach and having more muscle glycogen (carbs in your muscles).
How To Calculate Your Maintenance…
Firstly, you can use my simple calculator on my Instagram highlights by going here
2. We use some math based on your current weight loss.
Depending on how much weight you lose each week, you can determine how much of a calorie deficit you’re in.
Simple Math
We know that 450g of fat (1 pound) contains 3500 calories.
Which is why when people go into a 500 calorie deficit per day (3500 calories over the week) they lose about 450 – 500g a week.
So if we simplify the numbers down further we can figure out that for every 100 calories you’re in a deficit it equals about 90g lost on the scale.
Here’s how I did that
100 calorie deficit a day (700 calories per week) = 90g lost per week
200 calorie deficit a day (1400 calories per week) = 180g lost per week
300 calorie deficit a day (2100 calories per week) = 270g lost per week
400 calorie deficit a day (2800 calories per week) = 360g lost per week
500 calorie deficit a day (3500 calories per week) = 450g lost per week
See where I’m going here?
Roughly for every 100 calories a day you’re in a deficit you can predict how much fat you’ll lose in the week.
Now you won’t see this with a 100 – 200 calorie deficit which is why most people start the deficit with at least 300 calories but I think you get the picture.
So if you’re losing about 500g a week you know you’re in about a 500ish – 550 calorie deficit a day.
So if you wanted to stop losing weight, all you have to do is add back in 500 calories and you’ll stop losing.
It’s really that simple.
If you’re losing 300g a week then you know you’re roughly in a 350 calorie deficit a day and you just add that back in.
How can you gain body fat from just stopping weight loss?
You can’t.
So I hope that clears up the confusion when it comes to going to your new maintenance calories.
My job is just to make it as simple as possible for you to understand and not be fooled by what people say online.
