Hi all!

I've been reading 3FC for probably 5 months now, but this is my first post.

A couple months back, someone posted asking about eating at their maintenance calories and just using exercise to lead them to that weight. She had had someone suggest it and several people here seemed skeptical but said why not give it a shot. I tried to do a search and couldn't find the thread.

I'm wondering if that ended up working out, so I'm posting in hopes that they (or someone else who has tried the same thing) will update us on how that worked!

I've been losing on ~1400 a day or so but I'm interested in learning if I can bump that up to the 1800 I should be eating to maintain. (I'm fine with my weight loss slowing down now, I've lost about 20lbs and my pants fit again, which was my big goal, but I wouldn't mind losing a bit more of the excess flab.)

Thank you!

The problem with losing weight eating maintenance calories, is that you do not know what your maintenance level of calories is going to be, until you hit your goal weight.

If you choose a calorie level, even if it is a higher one, and you end up losing some weight-then it isn't maintenance calories for you at this time.

If you are 250 pounds, trying to get to 170 pounds, and you look up what would be an average maintenance level for 170 pounds and do it NOW...then you are not losing at maintenance calories. Maintenance calories means eating what you need to maintain the same weight NOW. If you lose weight on what would be maintenance for 170...that would be a weight loss level for 250. Make sense?