Have been doing intermittent fasting & CICO for a short while now for weight loss and am having good success. (Thanks, by the way!)
So when I get to my target weight how do I maintain and not just pack the pounds back on? I don’t want this to just be a fad diet, then gain back all I’ve worked so hard for.
I’m all ears!
After losing all or most of the pounds I wanted, I keep counting calories to stop me from gaining them back. I wanted to stop fasting too, and did so for a few weeks (tried intuitive eating, which was not bad to my surprise), but turns out I have to keep fasting because it helps my mental health. So, I guess I will just continue doing fasting and CICO for the very long term because with fasting, it’s not like I have a choice, and without CICO I may gain the weight back.
Anyway, look into intuitive eating if you don’t want to keep fasting nor counting calories, see if that works for you. Since you already do CICO, there’s a lot fo knowledge that won’t go away easily, so you may have a pretty good baseline of how much to eat during a day without counting calories anymore. Of course, whatever route you take will take a lot of discipline to not overeat often, that’s key.
Roll back through something less stringent than you do to hit your goal. If you did OMAD to get there, go back towards 18:6 or 16:8 for maintenance. IF is more about a lifestyle change to reap health benefits - many of which are beyond weight loss.