In my experience, which may be nothing like your experience...
- Switching to maintenance-level
calories meant 2-3
pound weight jump, which had nothing to do with any metabolic issues, or eating too many
calories, or anything like that. AFAICT, it was my water weight restabilizing after having been kept artificially low while I was losing. If I wanted to maintain at a given weight, I needed to either lose a couple of
pounds more up front, or tolerate a couple of months at a higher weight than
goal while my weight slowly drifted down and I ate slightly less than maintenance-level
calories.
- My weight flucutates 2-3
pounds up and 2-3
pounds down from trendline. The lowest weight I see on the scale isn't typical. If I wanted to be at that lowest weight on a typical day, needed to either lose a couple of
pounds more up front, or tolerate a couple of months at a higher weight than
goal while my weight slowly drifted down and I ate slightly less than maintenance-level
calories.
I kept up the exercise and added more
calories. Not quite enough more, since I'm still slowly slowly drifting downward, but pretty close.
I'm 5'4, and my
goal weight was 127. I saw 126.8 on the scale for the first time on March 1. I switched to maintenance-level
calories at that point, and saw my weight bounce back up to 130.8 by March 10th. Went back to losing until April 1, at which point I was regularly seeing
weights in the 123.8 to 124.6 range. Switched back to maintenance-level
calories again, and my weight settled out around 125-126 range. It was probably about 2 weeks after that before I started feeling more comfortable maintaining. The 6 weeks between March 1 and April 15th were pretty miserable.
For May, my weight's ranged between 123.8 and 127.6, which is a range I'm happy with.
