Right about the time I shifted to maintenance mode, I switched from Fitday to MyPlate. In Fitday, you track food and exercise, but it's kept separate unless you specifically run a calorie balance report (showing intake vs. output).

MyPlate adds your calories burned during exercise on to your "calories remaining" for the day. For example, if your goal is 1800 calories for the day, but then you record 300 calories of exercise, it automatically resets your calorie limit for the day to 2100.

This seems like a good idea for maintenance. I mean, after all, if you don't eat back your exercise, you'll lose instead of maintain, right? And I like the idea that if I know I'm going out to eat or making a higher-calorie dinner, I can put in a little extra time at the gym to "preload" some calories. I am not of the mindset to go out and try to work-off a binge or bad decision, so I am not worried about it turning into an exercise-purge scenario.

So I wanted to see what all you calorie-counting and exercising maintainers do... do you just shoot for a calorie average every day, regardless of workout? Or do you adjust your eating for the day based on your exercise that day?

I use TDP as well. I don't eat back exercise calories like they show on there, never have really. I shoot for an 1800-2000 cal range, I eat towards the high end on the heavy exercise days. Lower end on no exercise days. I prefer to be no higher than 1950, even on a day with a long run. I ignore the 'calories remaining' up on the right hand bar graph and just look at the calories consumed number on the bottom of the day's food list.

For me, I've never tried to quantify the number of calories I burn in a day, either in activities of daily life, through intentional exercise, or my BMR. I know the number would be just a guesstimate so I just never bothered, figuring that the numbers would drive me nuts! Even during the year I was losing weight, I never paid any attention to my purported calorie burn. So it's never been a factor in my decisions regarding daily calories.

So my answer is that my calorie intake isn't affected by what I might burn off through intentional exercise. After nine years of daily weighing, I have an awfully good sense of how many calories it takes to gain, lose and maintain, so I only focus on the calories in side of the equation.

Of course, it helps that exercise is pretty much a constant in my life and I do about 1 1/2 to 2 hours every day. If I didn't exercise, I'd probably have to drop a LOT of calories per day -- yikes! Good reason to hit the gym every morning because I like to eat!!

But that's just me! Maintenance is all about finding something that works for YOU and it sounds like adding in exercise calories is a good fit for you!

I should add that I don't trust TDP's estimates of calories burned during exercise -- so I always use my own conservative estimate and enter it manually.

Meg, like you said, it's all about finding what fits me... and I guess I should also realize that what fits now may not fit later, and that this is a fluid process.

Why was it so much easier to wrap my head around losing than it is to figure out maintaining?

I wear a heart rate monitor, so the exercise calories I post in are from that. And really, I don't trust those numbers completely either. They are all just formulas someone came up with that aren't always accurate.

You are absolutely right that what fits now will change as time goes on, too. And in looking at my calories I know that my exercise is what allows me my recent ice cream crazies.

Maintaining was hard for me to get a handle on, too. Still working on it almost two years later. It is a very fluid process, absolutely.

You probably asked that rhetorically but I think it's a really important question!

Everything we read/see/hear about weight control is about losing weight. The implicit assumption is that keeping the weight off is the natural consequence of weight loss. All we have to do is get to our goal weights and no worries, the fat will stay off. The moon will be in the seventh house, Jupiter will align with Mars, all we have to do is listen to our bodies and we'll intuitively eat the correct foods in the right amounts to keep the weight off. The problem is that most of us have discovered how wrong that is!

People are absolutely flabbergasted that I'm more than eight years into maintenance and still count calories every day, plan meals in advance, weigh and measure portions, exercise every day ... Huh? Wasn't I cured back in 2002? Why on earth do I have to do the same things now that I did to lose weight? Do you mean there isn't some magical, mystical process that effortlessly keeps the weight off??

It's hard to figure out maintenance because hardly anyone thinks about it or talks about it. And if someone does, there seems to be a popular notion that it's wrong or disordered or at least neurotic to continue to use the tools that we used for weight loss in order to KEEP the weight off. People get downright belligerent at the idea that weight loss maintenance takes as much thought, planning, and hard work as did weight loss. Add to that the need for constant vigilance, for the rest of our lives.

James Hill, noted obesity researcher and author, says “We know that people are wildly successful in losing weight and wildly unsuccessful in keeping it off.” Yet maintenance continues to be almost completely ignored by the media and dieters alike. Most doctors and researchers seem to believe that large weight loss isn't sustainable, so no attention is paid to the issues -- lowered metabolism, set points, excess skin, biochemical changes -- of those of us trying to keep weight off. We don't have much in the way of a scientific road map to weight loss maintenance.

It's hard to figure out maintaining because of the deafening silence on the subject. Except here at 3FC!!

And I apologize for going so off topic on your thread!

No apology necessary -- such a great post!

I am eternally grateful for this forum. I never would have put as much thought into maintenance, either before or after reaching goal, as I have because I found you all!

Like the others, I don't pay attention to my food/exercise net calorie balance on LoseIt! the app I track my calories. I do admit that when I bike 34 miles and am nearly dead, I will have a mini blizzard as a treat - but I log it too. And still try to stay at my 1600 cals. But if I end at 1800 that day, I don't have the guilt that I do on non-overabundance exercise days.

Meg, great post. I love this line: “We know that people are wildly successful in losing weight and wildly unsuccessful in keeping it off.” so important to keep in the forefront of our minds.

I can't quite answer the OP's question yet as I am a maintenance newbie, but I just wanted to say great post, Meg. People OFTEN look at me as though I am some neurotically obsessed person with an eating disorder when they see that I still count calories and weigh my food. It's as though I gained the weight by some minor oversight, and now that I've fixed it I'm cured and normal; I don't have to worry about what I put in my mouth. Anyway, I wish I could answer these people as eloquently as you've worded it!

Excellent post, Meg!

I track my activities in FitDay, but pay no attention to the alleged calorie burn for the purposes of setting my calorie budget. I just like to know, in general, how active I've been. I also track my sleep there, amongst my activities, because I've had badly disordered sleeping in my past, and as one of my first commitments to losing weight and getting healthier, I decided to put some real effort into fixing my screwed-up sleep cycle. I've been VERY successful with that, and gone from being a perpetually exhausted and underslept night owl to somebody who is usually asleep well before midnight, and up again by about 6:30 am, or earlier, most days. I attribute a LOT of my success to that.

Thank you! I have to keep reminding myself that's it's really never over and there's nothing wrong with the fact that I still track, plan and weigh and plan to continue, maybe forever...

Regarding eat back exercise cals, I set mine to kind of figure in a exercise factor and then I rely on my body and the scale to tell me if it's enough. If I'm not eating enough then I'll be hungry and start losing again.

Wow. Meg. Yes. YES! YESSSS! All of these things. So much attention and informtion and knowledge on how to do it--but sadly, I agree with you--there is a lack of information and support where maintenance is concerned. Yes, you are right. You must, I MUST do what I did to lose the weight if I plan to stay here. It'S. JUST. THE. WAY. IT. IS!

This is a great thread, as it hits on a number of things I'm thinking about as I get closer to my maintenance weight. I do count my exercise calories as freebies, and it makes me exercise more and harder to earn extra food! I'm following 1200 calories per day, and I really have a hard time sticking with that small number. I just always feel hungry, and that's dangerous because then I feel deprived. So I exercise daily to earn a few hundred more calories, and I stick to the number that my fitness pal says I have. It's working, although I'm sure I'd lose faster if I didn't, but my body just needs to eat more than 1200 cals per day.

Regarding continuing to count calories and weigh and measure everything during maintenance, I have had to listen to my sister several times tell me how different maintenance will be when I tell her this is what it's going to look like from now on. She has never been outside of the "normal" BMI range for her height, but has been maybe 25 pounds over her ideal weight. She has lost some weight with me, without actually tracking calories, just guestimating, cutting back and moving more. I keep telling her if I could do it like that, I would never have gotten fat in the first place. Her method doesn't work for me, and mine won't work for her.

We all need to find what works us, just like in weight loss. There may be tons more info available for weight loss than there is for maintenance, but in the end, we still just have to find what works for us individually. Once "they" start paying attention to maintenance, it will just be about ways to make more money off of people anyway. It's all hooey. This is the best place to go, to learn from each other what methods to try to find something that will work for us. Thanks all of you, for sharing your strategies!