My boys are at their father’s place today so I took a drive to Minnamurra and walked to Kiama blowhole and back. Broke my record for number of steps in a day too! Happy and tired now 😅
Hi, I’ve hit goal weight using CICO supported by medication. I’m in the process of navigating maintenance and struggling a bit. I’ve been in a deficit since January 2025 and lost over 50% of my initial weight (female, 164cm, 130kg to 57kg, 48yo). As I mentioned I have been using medication, however since the start I have also been strictly counting and monitoring calories. I started walking intentionally in June 2025 and just ignored my exercise calories as most people advised and really treated the walking as more for my wellbeing than helping to lose weight.
I decided once I hit 60kg to start reverse dieting up to maintenance as I had researched that doing it slowly would help my metabolism readjust. I expected the scale to go up a little bit. I have also reduced my medication dose since hitting healthy bmi (about 67kg a couple of months ago).
I am continuing to lose weight however and I think it’s because I haven’t been taking into account my steps and walking calories. I don’t do much other exercise just one strength training session a week. I walk an average of 15k steps a day, but this can fall between 12k and 20k so nothing extreme but maybe more than average?
My question is, how do people trying to enter maintenance count calories from walking? Should I believe my Garmin? Or just keep slowly moving up calories until the scale stabilises? I had seen myself as counting calories for life now as I don’t want to regain. Thanks for any advice