If you’ve been dedicated to a plan for eight weeks, it’s time to change things up. I’m going to suggest you do something that might feel outside of your comfort zone: Eat your maintenance calories for a week.
If you are in that maintenance mindset, you have to take a very long-term approach to this. It’s not about immediately dropping the weight on the scale.
If you are on the same routine for, say, six to eight weeks, you have to start changing things up. We don’t want you to plateau, so you don’t want to eat the exact same calories for an indefinite period of time.
A lot of people don’t discuss this, and I really wish they would. About every eight weeks — maybe 12 max, if you’ve got a lot of weight to lose — you should transition into your maintenance calories for just a week.
Give your body a break. Let it get adjusted to something else. Give yourself a mental break, and let yourself see what it feels like to eat at maintenance. Maybe change up your workout at that time, too. It’s always good to be changing.
In order to go to maintenance calories, if you have something like a Fitbit or a BodyMedia band, you would just go into My Fitness Pal and choose “Maintain my weight for the week.” What it’s going to do is it’s going to adjust your calories for you so you’re not eating at a deficit. If you’ve been going by a calculator, put in that you want to maintain for a week and it will give you an approximate number of calories to hit.
This is a wonderful way to (1) keep you from plateauing, (2) keep you sane and (3) kind of experience what maintenance will feel like.
Remember to changing things up about every eight to 12 weeks if you have quite a bit of weight to lose. Comment below or on Facebook to share how you plan to change things up in your routine.