Lose, Maintain or Gain: Concise Tips for Weight Management

A simple guide to losing, maintaining or gaining weight

Before you continue, these are weight management tips from my own weight loss and weight gain journey, but that doesn’t mean they will work perfectly for you.

But that’s also not to say they won’t work for somebody else too!

I have been in all 3 of these situations, wanting to gain weight, wanting to maintain it and following my success in both of these, I am now in the last position where I want to lose weight myself.

Of course, being consistently “thin” whilst still being able to eat whatever junk I wanted was great.

Until the annoying comments about how nice it must be to eat whatever I wanted and still fit into “small” clothing.

But what these same people could never understand is that I never wanted or enjoyed being this thin.

Read my guide to weight management: including my experience losing, maintaining and gaining weight over the years.

Calorie Requirements - How TDEE Works

Okay first things first! Every single person will have their own calorie requirements.

If you already know what you need then that’s great, but if not, here’s a handy little calculator that will give you your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE).

This tells you how much you must consume to stay at your current weight. Access a Calorie Calculator here.

In its simplest form, maintain your calorie intake to maintain your weight, and eat more calories to gain weight. The more complicated part is that no, just consuming fewer calories alone will not make you lose weight. 

Here are my top 3 personal tips for each scenario, to help you take your weight into your own hands.

3 Top Tips to Maintain Your Current Weight 

First, the easiest one, in my opinion. Maintaining weight:

1. Track yourself

This will be applicable to all 3 aspects of weight management.

In this case, try and track what you eat for 7 days, and work out your calories as you’re going along. Thankfully, there are plenty of smartphone apps that can help you with this.

From doing this you will already begin to get an idea of what you consume and how you do this.

Building on from this, I would suggest starting a diary or log. Keeping a track of what you eat and how many calories you’ve consumed throughout the day will help you reach your target.

If you keep hitting your TDEE you should stay at the same weight.

2. Understand what you need

From using the TDEE calculator I linked earlier, you will get your basal metabolic rate (BMR).

This is simply the number of calories your body needs just for basic life-sustaining functions. Basically, this is the bare minimum you need.

This will need to change based on your individual activity levels for the week, as this will influence how much additional energy, and therefore extra calories, you need to consume.

Using myself as an example. I’m 23, female, 165cm and 60kg. My BMR is 1,355 calories a day. Now that sounds like nothing.

However, I walk to and from work every day and I go on a couple of small runs a week.

Using the activity scale, that would come under “Active: daily exercise or intense exercise 3-4 times a week” as my daily exercise is at least 15-30 minutes of elevated heart rate activity.

This alone changes my calorie intake needs from 1,355 calories to 2,100.

3. Change as you change

This one is tricky as you can never really predict change- unless you’ve dictated this change.

If you’re planning to do more exercise anytime soon, you will need to recalculate your TDEE with your new activity levels.

If you now need more calories due to exercise but still stick to your original target, you will start to see weight loss.

The same goes for if you reduce the amount of exercise you’re doing. Taking the car to work instead of walking now that it’s getting cold? Less exercise means fewer calories.

Recalculate your TDEE based on your current level of activity. If you now need fewer calories but still stick to the original target, instead, you’ll be seeing weight gain. 

3 Top Tips to Gain Weight

Now, when it comes to gaining weight, your TDEE is still important. The calculator again can show you individual calorie needs for mild weight gain, general weight gain and fast weight gain.

Weight gain is typically associated with “bulking” nowadays by classic bodybuilders like The Rock. Although, I really do not know how he can practically force himself to eat that much food!

Here, we’re just thinking about gaining weight in general, not just muscle mass. We can save that for another day.

1. Eat when you’re hungry

This sounds simple, but instead of just eating larger meals, the “little but often” approach worked better for me in this case.

A large plate can be overbearing and ruin your appetite, getting up and making whatever tickles your fancy at the time throughout the day will help a lot in terms of staying on track with your calorie target.

For me, I had small meals every 3-5 hours and snacks throughout the day whenever I wanted a little something.

The saying “little and often” can really help here in terms of reaching your TDEE.

2. Don’t opt for the junk food option

It’s pretty well known by now that junk food is FULL of calories. Calories that could take you quite close to your target all in one go, yes great! Easy win! 

Well yes and no, yes it can bring you those easy calories and you get to tuck into a nice pizza, chocolate bar or crisps, whatever your guilty pleasure may be, but at what cost?

Well, that junk food is detrimental to your digestive system. It will slow it down and make it very difficult to digest this mass number of calories. It will leave you feeling bloated, stressed and in discomfort.

I learnt this one the hard way and trust me, it isn’t worth it.

Instead, opt for home-cooked meats that haven’t been overly-processed, and add any extras to your meals wherever you can.

This can be cheese, mayo, seeds, bacon bits or salad dressings.

You’ll be surprised just how many calories you’ll be adding to your meals by cooking using a different prep oil such as coconut oil or butter.

When it comes to snacks, ditch the choccy bars or the crisps and pick up some yoghurts, cheese strings or granola bars to fill that hunger bar up without getting the bloating.

3. Drinking your calories

If you’re ever struggling with eating meals or snacking, or you’re just simply not in the mood to cook or eat, then you can always turn to drinks.

Your body always needs fluids anyways, so you can put that to good use and get some calories in there whilst you’re at it.

Now that isn’t to say go drink your bodyweight in lemonade or Fanta, but simply adding a glass of fruit juice with your breakfast, or a glass of milk before bed can quickly and enjoyably add 200-300 calories right there.

Again, these extra calories can really help you reach your TDEE.

3 Top Tips from my Weight Loss Journey so far

Okay and now for the complicated one, losing weight.

Now this one for me is still a work in progress so bear with me.

There are plenty of these diets out there, anything from vegan to keto, to my personal un-favourite of being purely calorie-deficit.

I won’t get too scientific with you now about it; I’ll save it for another day.

1. Plan your training

So, it’s a given that to lose weight you need to burn calories, so going for runs and going to the gym will become a big part of this.

To help with this, planning what days you go for a run, what days you go to the gym, how long of a run and what are you working on in the gym will help you form a routine.

It’s proven that making and sticking to a routine provides better outcomes.

Something as simple as a sheet of paper and writing down the days and what you’ll do still counts as planning your training.

2. Eat better

Eating a more balanced diet will allow you to have what you need and only what you need.

This will put you in some form of calorie deficit, but not on its own as you will be training alongside this. Including more fruit and veg in your diet will mean consuming less fat and more fibre, which are both key for weight loss.

There are plenty of other nutritional information and tips out there that can help you do this, too.

3. Water, water and more water

Linked to number 2, water will need to be a big part of your diet. It’s a very easy thing to overlook, but it is an everyday essential, even more so when you’re training and trying to lose weight.

When training more often you’ll need water to replace electrolytes you’ve lost through sweat, as well as replacing a large amount of water you’ve lost from sweating too.

Fun fact for you, the American Journal of Exercise suggests that for every pound lost during exercise, you should drink 2 cups of water.

This is when your body takes up fluids most efficiently.

Water is also very useful for burning those calories, as water is known to boost your metabolism by up to 25%.

So simply drinking more water can help you lose weight.

Water also helps as it is a natural appetite suppressant.

It takes up space in the stomach too, and when the stomach senses that it is full, it will signal to your brain that you don’t need to eat. So, that should mean less snacking!

All in all, things can work differently for different people, but enough trial and error will pretty much always result in success!

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