maintenance calories

How do I find out my maintenance calories? I'm trying to lose weight, but I'd like to know how many calories I can eat without gaining weight on those days that I just want to eat a little more.

My daily calorie goal is 1318, and my burn meter says I burn between 2000-2100 a day.

when your intake = outgo, you'll maintain.  So you can eat up to your total burn without gaining weight.  In your case, that sounds like about 2,000 cals.

Make sense?

So if one day I feel like eating around 2,000 when I usually eat 1300-1400 a day, I can do it and not have to feel guilty? Sweet.

You might want to play with a range between

body weight x 11 (or 10) = calorie maintenance

Every body is slightly different in how it reacts to calories, so play with it and see what works best for you.  Just be careful not to fall into plateau mode in terms of your calories, or you'll have a hard time getting your metabolism fired back up.  The trick is to keep it humming along, making it think it's in weight loss mode, not in starvation mode.   :)

if i do the body weight x 11 = maintenance thing, it says i need like 1200 calories for maitenance (i weigh 105-110 something around there)....i highly doubt thats accurate. im not a very active person, and i still eat about 1500-1800

Try this  http://www.ahealthyme.com/topic/calneed

Someone posted it today and I found that the site is about overall health (not just about weight loss) and has a review board that consists of MDs.

 

Original Post by sk33ny:

if i do the body weight x 11 = maintenance thing, it says i need like 1200 calories for maitenance (i weigh 105-110 something around there)....i highly doubt thats accurate. im not a very active person, and i still eat about 1500-1800

 

You are right - that equation is completely inaccurate. I don't know where it came from, but I wish it would go back there.

To the OP - your maint. calories is the amount you burn in a day. If your burn meter says 2000-2100 (assuming that you have appropriately set your activity and entered, or not, your exercise) then that is your maint.