The Beauty of Maintenance And Why It Gives You More Freedom

This episode is all about why maintenance is the most underrated place to live if you want real flexibility with your body and your goals. I’m talking about why constantly living in a deficit can leave you stuck, why falling off every time life gets busy keeps you in the same cycle, and how maintenance gives your body the stability it needs to function better. When you’re truly at maintenance, it becomes so much easier to intentionally dip into a deficit to lean out or move into a build phase to gain muscle without feeling like you’re constantly starting over. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

A lot of people are out here trying to lose fat or build muscle from a body that is too underfueled to do either well at all. Welcome to the Embodiment Lab. My name is Addy. And today we are going to talk about maintenance calories. And this is something that I am so incredibly passionate about because this is the place that is my ultimate goal to bring every single one of my clients to. And there are several clients that I have that have been working with me for several years. And it is truly a blast to work with them because it is truly so, so cool to be able to drop them into a deficit whenever they want to, or to go into a surplus and build whenever they want to. And they have the freedom to do both of those things because of where they're at in their journeys with food and their intake, which is at their maintenance calories. So we're going to talk about why maintenance calories is really important to establish. And if you're not at maintenance calories, why that's probably holding you back from reaching your goals. So the first thing that I want to say is that with most women, the problem is that way too many of us are living in a deficit, whether this is intentional or not. And because of this, their body is unable to do anything. And so the more that they try, the harder their body resists. So we've talked about your metabolism in previous episodes. Your metabolism is an energy converter machine, or not machine, it's a system, but like we can call it a machine, whatever you want. And basically, whatever you give your metabolism is what it will adapt to. So if you are giving your body an excess of food, it's going to increase the speed of your metabolism to help to use that energy and convert it into muscle or fat or whatever nutrients that your body needs it to be. If you give your body a very little amount of food, it's going to slow down to accommodate for the fact that it's only getting that much. And it's going to be very smart with how it uses that energy and it's going to distribute it to wherever it needs. Now, the problem is a lot of people, first of all, don't understand how much they're eating. They're unaware of it, and that's not their fault. It's just kind of how society has convinced us that we need to live is that we need to eat as little as possible to be as small as possible as women, and that's insane. Or second, we're intentionally living in a deficit because we've been told that if you want to lose fat, you need to eat less and move more, which is true. But then we take that way too far and we end up eating as little as possible for longer than we should because we're not reaching our goals. And so we think, okay, we just need to continue to eat less and less until you do. But then you develop a fear of eating food because you haven't reached your goals. And every time that you do eat more food, whether that's you go out to a restaurant or you have a day where you're off track or whatever, or you go on vacation, then you continue to drill into your head and convince yourself that if you eat more food, you will gain weight. And so you are living in this deficit, but it's no longer serving you. And that's a really scary place to be because now your metabolism has slowed down and you're no longer burning an efficient amount of calories and your body's no longer functioning efficiently or in the way that it should. And so it starts to take a toll on a lot of the systems in your body and how you feel. But on top of that, now you're plateaued and you think that, okay, you just need to try harder, you just need to be more disciplined, you just need to eat less, you just need to eat more perfect, when really that's just forcing your body to resist you even harder because it's simply just not being given enough. So whether you're under-eating intentionally or unintentionally, whether or not you're aware of it, you end up in this place where you are no longer able to lose fat and your body doesn't have the resources to build muscle. And so you plateau, you notice that you have lower energy, you notice that you're not recovering from your workouts very well. Maybe you feel incredibly sore and it takes you several days to recover from your workouts. Your workouts themselves feel like shit because you don't have any energy to actually put effort into your workouts. And so they don't feel productive, they don't feel good, you don't feel like you're actually getting results from your workouts. You feel like they're a waste of time. You'll notice inconsistency in your diet where you will restrict really hard, and then you might find yourself um overindulging and losing control over the smallest of inconveniences. Maybe you go out to a restaurant and instead of just eating a comfortable amount and stopping when you're full and satisfied, you overindulge and you go crazy. That kind of inconsistency you'll notice. You'll notice shitty digestion. Your body will not know how to handle food because it's not being given enough food. And you'll notice that you feel more bloated. Maybe you're constipated. And then you'll just feel incredibly frustrated because let's be honest, this is really frustrating to be putting in so much effort and trying your absolute hardest to lose fat and build muscle and build the body that you actually feel confident in, and you're just not getting anywhere. So that's not an ideal place to be. Let's just acknowledge that right now. Not ideal, not fun. You feel like shit, and you feel like you look like shit, and you feel like the more that you try, the worse your body looks. That's really frustrating. So the first thing that I want to say is you are not meant to live in a deficit. Again, whether you're aware of this or whether it's unintentional, you're not supposed to eat less than your maintenance calories for an extended period of time. So, goal number one should be restoring your body, your metabolism, and bringing your calories up to maintenance. And I have a whole episode about reverse dieting and your metabolism. You can go listen to that to get a little bit more information on that process and what that does for your body. It's an incredible process and it's very restorative. And you need it if you've been living in this chronic state of under-eating for an extended period of time. But the beauty of being at maintenance, let's just talk about this. So when you're at maintenance, you are getting enough food to support all of your bodily functions. So that's brain function, organ function, breathing, digestion, blood flow, little itty bitty movements like blinking, your heartbeat, you know, all of these things. You're eating enough to support that. Your body literally functioning at a baseline level. And also you're eating enough to support your daily activities. So, like movement, like grocery shopping, going to work, doing chores around the house, and your workouts, all of that. So when your body is getting enough food to cover all of that, you're at maintenance. With that, you'll experience more energy. You'll experience better recovery from your workouts. You'll feel like you're not as sore from your workouts and you won't be sore for as long, which is amazing. You'll feel even better during your workouts. You'll feel like you can give your workouts 100%. You'll feel super strong, like you can actually progress with overload. You'll actually feel like you're getting the benefit from the workout. But then also your body will have the resources and tools that it needs in order to build muscle from those workouts, which is incredible. So you'll be getting all of the benefits that you should be from your workouts when you're eating at maintenance. You'll also notice that your mindset around food will improve because now you're operating from this position of can I fuel my body with enough food rather than can I control the food that goes into my body? It's letting go of that mindset of restriction and shifting your mindset into more of a place where you are giving your body what it needs. You'll experience clearer hunger cues. You'll notice when you're hungry, you'll stop eating when you're full. You'll wake up feeling hungry, or you'll wake up feeling not bloated. You'll wake up and actually like have a morning movement, which is awesome. You should have digestion that is moving freely and just flowing through your system. You're not, you're not experiencing like constipation or anything like that. You'll also notice better digestion. You'll notice a clearer mind. You'll notice better sleep. You'll notice all of these things when you're living at maintenance because you're giving your body what it needs to function properly, which is so, so important. And if your body is functioning properly, then you're at a place where you can choose to do whatever the heck you please. You want to build muscle, you eat a little bit more, a little bit above your maintenance. Amazing, fantastic, perfect. We love. You want to lose a little bit of fat, you eat slightly below your maintenance. And you'll actually see results from that, which is incredible. Or you can continue to hang out at maintenance and maintain the physique that you have with ease, without having to try so ding dang hard. It's amazing. But the problem is that people think that maintenance is like you're backing off, or like you're losing momentum, or you're not making progress, or you're losing progress, or whatever it is. And that's not the case. Maintenance is literally just maintaining what you have. And that's a great goal to have because you're not always in life going to be working toward a goal or even have the capacity to be working toward a goal. So why the heck are we going to exhaust ourselves by by continuing to push ourselves toward a goal when maybe work stress is high, or maybe we're raising kids and that's a little bit stressful. And so we need like periods of time where we're gonna back off. Or, hey, maybe you go on vacation or you go out of town. You know, life is gonna happen. Things are going to come and go. And so it's important to understand that living in a state of maintenance is okay. But also understanding that it's not all about having your foot on the gas all the time. And if you can't have your foot on the gas, then you just let go and go backwards. You don't have to let yourself go whenever you do go through seasons of life where things are a little bit more busy, because then you're going backwards. If you just like lose all sight of your goals and all sight of actually genuinely taking care of yourself, then you're going backwards. And then the next time that you want to get back into shape, you have to start all the way over from square one versus learning how to live at maintenance. Then when you want to push your foot on the gas a little bit more, you can do that from where you are now rather than having to go back and do all the work from the beginning. Hopefully that makes sense. But maintenance is the place that you want to hang out at most of the time. You will go through seasons where you want to lose fat. You'll go through seasons where you want to build muscle, but you always want to return to maintenance. It also makes your future phases that much more effective. When you live at maintenance rather than living in a deficit, you have the freedom to be able to pick and choose what you want to do with your body. When you're eating and living at your maintenance calories, this also allows you to eat more food than when you're in a deficit or when you're unintentionally under-eating. And this is an obvious statement, but I'll just give you an example just from like my body and my physique. So my maintenance calories are around 24 to 2,500 calories. So it's really simple for me to eat at maintenance and continue to do my workouts and continue to build muscle and just live my life and be happy, go lucky, go to weddings and go on vacations and do whatever, do whatever I want because I have the freedom to, right? If I want to go through a little bit of a fat loss phase, then I can just slowly drop my calories into a deficit from that. And I will, I will lose weight. I will lose fat. I'll get leaner. It's amazing. If I want to go through a building phase, like what I'm doing right now, all I have to do is increase my calories. Like right now, I'm consuming 2,800 calories and I'm in a slight caloric surplus, and I'm doing so in a way that allows me to stay lean while I'm putting on muscle. But it's a lot easier to be able to do both of those things because I'm at maintenance, right? Whereas I'll give you an example of a client who, like a typical client, when they first start working with me. So when I first start with a client, I have them just start tracking what they're eating right now. I don't give them any specific targets because I don't know where they're starting from. And the targets that I give them may be unrealistic for their body and it's just not going to work. So I have them start tracking their calories so we can figure out exactly what they're currently consuming. And most of the time, this is anywhere from 1100 calories, 1200 calories, 1500 calories. And it's usually all over the place like that. And so usually when somebody comes to me and they're consuming that much, they're having a very hard time losing fat and building muscle. And so that is technically their maintenance calories because they're not going anywhere. They're not gaining weight, they're not losing weight, they're not doing anything. And so their body has slowed down and adjusted to that. That's their maintenance calories. But that is not their optimal maintenance calories. That is just what their body has adapted to and slowed down to. So from there, I calculate what their maintenance calories should be based on their BMR and their activity. That gap is the reason why they're stuck and they're not experiencing the changes that they want to experience. So we bring them from their current intake to their optimal maintenance calories. So their body is functioning more effectively and it's burning more calories at a higher rate because they're giving their body what it needs and it's no longer in survival mode. So this allows them to have more freedom around food and actually be able to satisfy cravings because they're no longer depriving their body of nutrients that it needs. And so hopefully that makes sense when I say that their maintenance calories is like what they've trained their body to survive on versus their optimal maintenance calories, which is where their body really needs their calorie intake to be. And I help to bring them to that level so it restores their body and actually allows their body to do what their body is supposed to do. And now instead of surviving on 12 to 1500 calories, maybe their maintenance calories that I've calculated for them is somewhere around 2,000, 2200, whatever that number may be for that specific person. And now they're allowed to eat more food and they're now at a place where if they want to continue to build muscle and build shape, they can go into a surplus. Or we can dip them into a deficit and their body will actually respond to both of those things. But the problem that I see with a lot of people is when they've been eating 12 to 1500 calories, anytime that they go out to eat and they eat a little bit more than they're used to, or they go out of town and they wake up the next morning or they come back from being out of town and they're up four pounds, then that thought of like, okay, I ate more than what I'm used to and I gained weight, you're confirming that in your brain. And that keeps you stuck because yeah, of course, you're gonna gain weight because when you eat more food than what your body's used to, it's gonna store it as water weight. It's gonna be like glycogen. So it's gonna pull extra carbs and water into your muscles. You're literally gonna have extra food volume in your digestive system. And so, yeah, it's gonna be weight, but it's not fat gain. And that's what people don't understand is it's not fat. You didn't lose progress, you didn't gain weight. Your body just fluctuated in response to you doing something out of the norm. And so, yeah, the scale is gonna reflect that. But in the reverse diet process to getting their body to their maintenance calories, it's a slow strategic process that is meant to get your body to adapt slowly over time to a higher intake so that their body is more responsive to that intake and it doesn't lead to fat gain and it doesn't lead to continuing to feel stuffed and full from eating that amount of food. Because, like I said in the beginning, your body will adapt to what you give it. And so you can literally train it to expect to get enough food and it will know how to handle that food. And if you go to the gym and you strength train, you're literally telling your body, hey, this food that I'm getting, turn it into muscle, and you'll be able to build muscle with that. And that in turn also increases the speed of your metabolism. It all works together and it's freaking amazing. But none of this happens if you're living in a deficit and continuing to underfuel your body. So it's all about learning exactly what your body needs and then strategically getting your body to return to that baseline so that you do have the freedom to build muscle, lose fat, and live your life happily ever after. So that is it for today's episode. I hope that this made sense. I hope that you understand that maintenance is where you should be hanging out, not underfueling, because that will get you absolutely nowhere except for with a headache and in the plateau, just banging your head against the wall and that wall not actually going anywhere. So if you need help reversing out of the undereating mentality, you know where to find me. My information is in the show notes of this episode. The link to work with me is also there. So you know what to do with that. But hopefully you enjoy this episode. Hopefully, you got a lot of helpful information out of it. And I will chat with you in the next one. Bye.