Hey,
I was recently talking to a friend who is relatively famous in the fitness world, and naturally, given the nature of our careers, we were talking about nutrition.
We have both been dieting to lose some fat recently, and we were just discussing a few little things around the experience of fat loss dieting.
I am sure you have tried to lose fat at some stage, as most people have. So you likely have your own little stories to tell about what you found works, what doesn’t, and what you liked
and didn’t like about the experience.
Well, as I was talking to my friend, we got to talking about maintenance calories.
For those not familiar, “maintenance calories” is the level of calorie intake that allows you to maintain your body
weight. As distinct from a calorie deficit which leads to weight loss, and a calorie surplus which leads to weight gain.

He was saying that he had been eating at roughly maintenance for the last while since finishing his fat loss
phase. But he was still feeling a bit depleted and like he didn’t quite have as much energy as he would like.
Now, he is quite lean at the moment, probably below 10% body fat. So it’s not like he has much extra fuel easily accessible on his body. It’s only natural that he is going to feel a little bit depleted at times, especially if there has been a longer time
between meals.
The reason I am telling you about this is because, when I coach people in a similar situation, I always talk to them about the fact that maintenance calories are more of a range than a distinct number.
Metabolism is a bit weird
in that it isn’t a perfectly additive model, and is instead often talked about as being adaptive or constrained.

While we tend to think of your calorie needs as being a relatively simple equation (calories in and calories out), the
actual stuff that goes on under the hood isn’t quite as simplistic.
When you are in a deficit of calories, your metabolism adapts a bit and you start to burn fewer calories. This is largely due to reductions in your non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) (you can think of this as stuff like fidgeting and your daily step count), but some of it is due to reductions
in certain biological processes such as hormone production.
This is why women who diet too aggressively very often lose their menstrual cycle.
Bringing this back to the discussion of maintenance calories. Just because you are
maintaining your weight, doesn’t necessarily mean you are eating sufficient calories to support all of these biological processes.
You aren’t technically in a deficit, because you are maintaining your weight. But you aren’t eating as many calories as you possibly could be eating, while still maintaining your weight.
This is what was likely going on with my friend. He was still just undereating, and could probably afford to eat an extra 150-200 calories a day and still maintain his weight.
Eating this little bit extra doesn’t seem like a lot, but he would almost certainly notice better
workouts, and he would probably spontaneously increase his NEAT. He would probably also notice that his sex drive would be increased a little bit more too.
Now, he may also notice a very slight increase in weight. However, this would almost certainly be due to increased glycogen (stored carbohydrates) and water. It wouldn’t be representative of him being in a
surplus.
The moral of the story is that metabolism is a bit weird. We often hear messages that lead us to believe that we need to eat fewer and fewer calories. But the reality is, you want to try and keep calories as high as possible while still accomplishing your goals.
Just because you want to lose some weight doesn’t mean you need to eat as little as possible.
Turn that thinking around and instead, try to eat as much as possible, while still losing weight (assuming weight loss is the goal).
You don’t have to eat the same amount of calories as you are eating at the end of a fat loss phase, you can eat more and still maintain. You should try to find the highest amount of calories you can eat, while still maintaining.
If you need help with your own diet, we do have lots of free content on the website about nutrition and how to set up the diet. We also have a few coaching spaces available, if you need more tailored guidance and high-level support. If you want to learn how to coach
nutrition, then we would highly recommend our nutrition coaching course.
Chat soon,
Paddy Farrell
Gary’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drgarymcgowan/
Triage Method Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/triagemethod/
Triage Method Website: https://triagemethod.com/
Triage Method YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TriageMethod