What is a maintenance strategy, and what should I expect?
For weight maintenance, your main goal is to maintain your weight but work on body composition. A maintenance strategy balances your calorie intake with energy expenditure to maintain your current weight, and results, whilst working on body composition. With this strategy, with adherence to your calories and macros, you will see optimal body composition changes where you're reducing fat but maintaining your overall weight. This strategy is perfect for those who want to build a little muscle but don't want to eat in a surplus, as you're going to provide your body with enough energy to support muscle growth. You would expect to see weight and measurement to stay stable or see a slight decrease in measurements. This strategy is perfect for those who want to focus more on building their knowledge and relationship with food.
Will I gain weight going on a maintenance strategy?
Moving into maintenance doesn’t mean you’re “giving up” on progress, it’s often where people learn how to create more balance, flexibility and long-term sustainability without feeling like they constantly need to be strict or dieting. Your calories are adjusted to better match what your body needs for daily activity, recovery, energy and long-term sustainability, rather than keeping you in a calorie deficit.
If you're moving into maintenance after being in a deficit, it's very common to feel nervous about increasing calories, especially if you’ve been in a more restrictive mindset for a while. Sometimes the scale may fluctuate slightly at first due to things like increased food volume, glycogen storage and fluid retention, but that doesn’t automatically mean you’re gaining body fat.
Maintenance can actually be a really valuable phase because it gives you the opportunity to find more balance and flexibility without needing to be overly strict all the time. For many people, this helps improve consistency, relationship with food, energy levels and overall sustainability long term. The main focus now is simply settling into a more balanced routine, staying consistent with your habits, and allowing your body time to adjust. From there, things can always be reassessed based on how you’re feeling and responding over the coming weeks.
In terms of the calorie increase, yes, a larger jump can absolutely be normal when transitioning from a fat loss phase into maintenance. Your previous calories were designed to keep you in a deficit, so maintenance calories need to come back up to a level that better supports your body, daily activity, recovery, energy and overall function without continuing to drive weight loss.
It’s a very common worry that increasing calories will automatically lead to weight gain, but maintenance calories are calculated with the goal of maintaining your current weight, not gaining body fat. Sometimes when increasing food intake, the scale may fluctuate slightly in the short term due to factors like increased food volume, glycogen stores and fluid retention, but that’s very different from actual fat gain. So, please don’t stress if that is what you see as your body starts to adapt to your new targets and strategy.
It’s also important to remember that maintenance isn’t about being “perfect.” Often, moving away from an all-or-nothing mindset can actually improve consistency overall because you’re not feeling as restricted or mentally drained trying to be strict all the time.
The biggest focus over the next few weeks is simply settling into consistency, monitoring how your body responds, and allowing yourself to adjust to eating a little more food again. If needed, things can always be reassessed over time based on your progress, and how you’re feeling physically and mentally.
How do I change/check my goal in app?
You can change your strategy effortlessly within the app's Journey page. Swap between fat loss, maintenance and muscle gain as you please.
Head to the app's 'Journey' tab. Scroll down to 'Current Goal', click 'Change' to take you to the goal options, and choose which goal you'd like to change to.
The goal will then be implemented at your next check-in day.
