Maintenance, Deficit, & Surplus 101

It’s sad when I see… 👀

The same exact women that have been trying to lose the same 20 pounds for years and keep running back to the quick fixes and diets that caused them to regain the weight in the first place 🙃

❌ You don’t need to be extreme.
❌ You don’t need to cut out all fruit, sugar, and carbs.
❌ You don’t need to add in HIIT, OT, F45, and live at the gym…

What you need is structure and to prioritize foundational habits 👈🏼

I know you want to lose weight yesterday. But what’s great about losing 10 pounds if you’re going to regain 20?

When you actually take the time to create a periodized nutrition approach, your results will improve significantly. This means following a plan that allows you to build daily healthy habits that feel doable for you, and also allows you seasons of eating enough and improving your metabolism + hormones, balanced with seasons of fat loss.

This takes patience, consistency, and doing the boring, unsexy work up front.

Are you willing to play the long-game and put in the boring work up front for greater long-term results?

Or will you always be stuck in the never-ending new + glorified crash diets?

Choose wisely 😉

Now let’s chat about what the “seasons” of nutrition look like…

“Seasons” of Nutrition: Maintenance, Deficit, and Surplus.

How to get started with knowing HOW much to eat, and WHY.

Maintenance

• The amount of calories needed to maintain weight without changes to your fat mass or lean muscle.
• Can see positive feedback with body composition, but the scale should stay the same (or slight increase or decrease).
• Biofeedback gets better (energy, gym performance, hormones, menstrual cycle, libido, mood, sleep, etc).
• Can take 4-18+ months to get to maintenance + hang there (depends on how long it took you to get there and how long your body needs to restore metabolism).
• Be sure to download my Free Guidebook: How to Lose Fat & Gain Muscle to Improve Body Composition. This will give you the details on how to calculate how many calories you need for maintenance.
• Be sure to TEST your maintenance calories rather than just relying on a calculation.

Deficit

• The amount of calories needed to lose weight (from maintenance).
• The goal is to diet off as many calories as possible. We suggest starting at a 10% deficit. You may need to get as aggressive as a 35% reduction.
• You can’t differentiate between losing fat vs muscle.
• You must EARN the right to diet: To start, biofeedback must be great + you are starting from maintenance calories.
• Diet no more than 12-16 weeks at a time (no more than 1-2x year because metabolism + hormones decline).
• Be sure to run thru this checklist to see if you are in an optimal spot to begin a deficit/cut.

Surplus

• The amount of calories needed to gain weight (beyond maintenance).
• When used in combination with a progressive overload strength training program, this can support muscle growth.
• 105-110% maintenance calories.
• Building muscle elicits better physique/body composition changes.