I’m a 5’5” 33 year old female who was overweight and has now been maintaining in the <130lb range for more than 5 years. This is a post for both losers and maintainers giving an example of how you can use information to control your weight loss and maintenance thereafter.
What I’ve been doing
I’ve been tracking my daily calorie intake for a long time: all the way back to 2014. I have spreadsheets that detail the following:
- my daily calorie intake
- calories burned from deliberate cardio exercise (running, cycling, and swimming)
- my daily weigh-ins
Every month and year, I use this data to recalculate by TDEE so that I have a good understanding of how many calories I’m actually burning in a day. While all this data collection may seem obsessive or unnecessary, it’s actually given my information that is invaluable in both losing weight and maintaining weight loss.
The Data
One thing I’ve found really interesting is how consistent the data is from year to year:
| Year | Starting weight (lowest from previous December) | Ending weight (lowest from ending December) | Calculated TDEE |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2014/2015 | 143 | 129 | 2,262 |
| 2016 | 129 | 126 | 2,179 |
| 2017 | 126 | 119 | 2,045 |
| 2018 | 119 | 128 | 2,016 |
| 2019 | 128 | 125 | 2,045 |
In the data above, I’ve made adjustments for exercise so that the TDEE number calculated above is my sedentary TDEE excluding the calories that I burn from deliberate exercise like running, cycling, and swimming. I do this because my exercise varies wildly: from as low as 3 hours per week to as much as 8 or 9 hours per week.
Note:
While I track my calories nearly every day, I do take some personal exceptions:
- Vacations
- Holidays
- About one random extra treat/cheat/etc day per month
HOWEVER, I do not simply ignore these days in my calculations. Rather, on these non-tracking days, I’ll record a blanket guess of 3,000/4,000/5,000 calories or so based on my overall impression of what I ate at the end of the day (with alcohol, it’s surprisingly easy to get to that 5,000 calories level…)
How I Use This Information
From the above data, I can confidently trust that I burn just over 2,000 calories per day just going about my regular daily activities. So, in periods where I want to maintain my weight, I aim to eat an average 2,000 calories/day plus whatever I burn through exercise.
Now, what happens over the year is that time periods will happen such as holidays or vacations where I eat more than this an inevitably gain a pound or a few. Following these periods, I’ll go into deficit mode: aiming to eat 1,500 to 1,700 calories/day, again plus whatever I burn through exercise.
Final Thoughts
In practice, it is not always easy sticking to a calorie budget. I’ll go over budget more than planned and maybe not maintain or lose as well as I’d like. But, I’m never left sitting here wondering why I’m gaining weight. I can always look over my numbers and see exactly why it happened.
This is where the knowledge is power. I have the information to troubleshoot my failings and I know where I ought to make adjustments to correct my course.
Note: a current version of a spreadsheet that you can use to calculate your own TDEE is available here: Adaptive TDEE tracking spreadsheet v3, rescue shelter
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