The Unf*ck Your Fitness Podcast

178. Maintenance Calories 101: Building Strength, Hormonal Health & Food Freedom

• Kristy Castillo

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Let’s talk about maintenance calories, because I get this question super often. What the heck are they? Will I gain weight? Lose weight? Eat more? Should I be tracking them? 


I know this can feel confusing as hell, so I wanted to break it down in this episode! 


This time of year, sooo many women feel pressure to be in a cut or build phase, but…there IS another option: maintenance.


Here’s the thing though - you don’t NEED to be dieting or trying to build muscle 24/7. Sometimes life is extra busy, things are chaotic, and adding a calorie deficit or extra pressure to perform just isn’t it. 


Maintenance is not a pause button, but actually a powerful phase that gives your body the fuel it needs to THRIVE! 


Eating in maintenance is giving your metabolism the love it deserves. You can expect benefits like stronger workouts, better recovery, stable hormones, and awesome energy to LIVE.YOUR.LIFE.


If you’ve been thinking maintenance means ‘stuck’, I hope this episode helped unf*ck that mindset. Maintenance is fuel, freedom, and choosing long-term success over quick-fix BS. I’m so proud of you for educating yourself AND showing up for yourself in this way!!


In this episode, we cover:

  • Why choosing maintenance calories when life is chaotic isn’t a failure, but a smart strategy
  • What maintenance calories *actually* are + why they matter
  • The truth behind why you don’t *need* a surplus to build muscle
  • Benefits of eating at maintenance
  • Why finding your maintenance calories can feel confusing + what to do instead
  • What it *really* looks like to reverse out of a ‘cut’ and land in maintenance
  • Choosing maintenance over cutting


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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Un-Fuck-Your-Fitness Podcast. I am your host, christy Castillo, and I'm here to give you real talk and cut the BS so you can actually enjoy building a body you love. I'm a personal trainer obsessed. What's up? Welcome to today's episode.

Speaker 2:

We are going to be talking about maintenance calories today. I get a lot of questions about maintenance calories and you know, I guess the questions are usually what the heck are maintenance calories? Will I gain? Will I get to eat more? What does that look like? How do I figure it out? This calculator is telling me one thing, another calculator is telling me another thing. What do I do All the things? So a lot of different questions around maintenance calories and in this episode I am going to break it down for you.

Speaker 2:

So I'm sorry, first of all if I sound a little funny. My allergies are kicking my ass and my throat is sore, like my voice is okay. So I decided to go ahead and record a couple of episodes because I'm famous for losing my voice. So my throat is killing me every single time I swallow. It hurts so bad, but my voice is fine and I feel okay at the moment today. So I figured before I drugged myself and kind of felt like shit later on in the day I might as well talk about this while I have some energy and I'm motivated to do so. So I'm sorry if I'm sniffling or if I just sound like I'm talking weird. I have like some mouth sores, allergies, my nose is like burning. Oh, I just feel not great. So I apologize, but the show must go on and this is a really great topic and I'm really excited to chat about it. And I wanted to definitely get to it because I'm getting a lot of questions as I'm recording more episodes about body recomp and this different type of living and working out and all these things. I want to discuss maintenance calories now, before we get too far gone and I get even more questions about it, because I hope not that I don't want to answer your questions, but I hope that this explanation will really really help you. So let's talk about maintenance calories. Yes, you actually do need to eat food. You actually do not need to be dieting all the time. You don't need to be building all the time. I actually just kind of converted that's an interesting word choice but one of my one-on-one clients.

Speaker 2:

We had a plan to build out this year-long routine for her, including a cut phase, maintenance phase, build phase, maintenance phase, cut phase kind of what I do and as we started working together, we realized that this time for her isn't really great for a cut this season. What we had kind of mapped out isn't great. It's not that she can't cut, it's not that she couldn't do it if she really wanted to push herself and, you know, be really restrictive and kind of suffer through it honestly, and that's okay. Some people choose that route For her. We didn't want to do that.

Speaker 2:

So that happens quite a bit honestly, even with myself. I decided a couple of months ago that I was want to do that. So that happens quite a bit Honestly, even with myself. I decided a couple of months ago that I was going to start cutting and then Cadbury mini eggs were out in stores and I was like I'm not ready yet, but sort of serious. But that happens to me where I think I'm ready to build and then my body says no, we're not quite ready to lift that heavy yet. Physically, I'm just not ready, mentally I'm just not ready whatever. And same thing with a cut. I will sometimes think that, okay, I'm ready to cut. I'll even say it here on an episode and I will talk about it on Instagram, on my stories, and say I'm starting a cut this week.

Speaker 2:

And then life happens. Or you know, we decided to go to LA and then I decided to go to my friend Aaron's house and like I'm not going to live in a restrictive state when I'm on vacations and when Cadbury mini eggs are in stores, like I'm just not. I would rather wait until that's over. So even for me, I think I'm going to do one plan right. I might've had a whole vision for this year of, like I'm going to start cutting now and coast through summer and then you know, such and such month, maybe like September, I'm going to start my build really gradually and things kind of fall apart. Pivoting is so crucial and that's why I talk about it all the time, because I have had to pivot so many times and you will too. So when you create a plan for yourself in this fitness journey and workouts and maybe surplus maintenance, deficit calories, it can get messed up okay, and it doesn't mean that you fail, doesn't mean that you suck. It just means that you need to pivot and create a new plan.

Speaker 2:

So maintenance calories are great, because for this particular client, she kept coming to me saying life is happening and they were legit reasons, not excuses, not shitty excuses, not cop-outs. I would definitely call someone out on that and say do you really want to do this? And if not, that's fine. It's fine to say like no, I'm going to cop out on this, I'm just not going to do it. That's fine, be honest with yourself. But I do like it when my clients have real reasons and I can say listen, these are not excuses. Your life is out of your control right now and we don't need to add more stress to it by getting shitty sleep, by trying to starve yourself, by trying to do extra cardio that you just don't really have time for. So, or the energy or the mind's, mental space for it, right? So we switched her to maintenance calories for now, because in maintenance calories you can make significant changes to your body.

Speaker 2:

In fact, I personally have spent years in maintenance calories. It wasn't until two years ago that I started the cut maintenance, build maintenance, cut maintenance build phase at that routine, cut maintenance, build phase at that routine. Up until then, for about I don't even know, probably five years before that, I basically lived on maintenance calories and I didn't know that's what it was. I had just found on my own, through trial and error and all the things that I teach you, I had found a calorie amount that allowed me to have some fun and that allowed me to have the body that I want and I was able to make significant strength gains and build muscle and lose fat within that calorie range. And it just depended on how much I wanted to lift, how much I wanted to do cardio, how much I wanted to do nothing. Right, my movement really depended on what I looked like, or what I looked like depended on my movement is what I should say. But you were able to make significant changes to your body in maintenance calories and it's so healthy for you to stay in maintenance calories.

Speaker 2:

So if you've ever wondered how much food you should be eating, especially when you're not trying to lose weight, this episode is for you. So we're going to talk about what maintenance calories are, why it's not giving up, how it supports your metabolism, your hormones, your strength gains, that you can make significant changes. I'm going to talk about how to find your maintenance number and some ways that I think you should not find your maintenance number that I've seen online and heard other people talk about, and, along with body recomp, why maintenance calories are kind of the missing link in your long-term success. So those are kind of the topics that I want to cover in this episode, because these are kind of the questions that I get a lot, so I just kind of turn them into bullet points and I want to talk about them.

Speaker 2:

So, first of all, what are maintenance calories? Like I said, for a couple of years years it seemed like for a long, long time people would ask me if I'm tracking macros, if I'm tracking calories, and for a long time I didn't have to. I did track my macros and weighed my food and measured my food and did all the things and tracked for a while, long enough that I knew exactly what I should be eating. I knew my stable foods. Like I've told you in previous episodes, I knew exactly how much I should be eating. Okay, and when I say exactly, I don't mean literally weighing it out and like very precise, but I knew that. You know protein shake, protein bar, kodiak waffle, a big salad, salmon, potato, whatever. Like I knew different foods that I could have in a day that would get me to my goals. I would have my tuna concoction, my two tuna packets with my hummus and my salsa, and eat that with tortilla chips. I would have overnight oats for breakfast. I would have a string cheese wrapped in turkey lunch meat for a snack with some almonds. I knew exactly what to have because I had messed with so many different arrangements in my fitness pal. That I knew and that's how I knew is because I had tracked it for so long. But I had lived for so long because when I found it I thought well, this is great. I found an amount that I'm eating.

Speaker 2:

Foods that I eat. They're freaking simple. I can take them with me, I don't have to think about it, I don't have to stress. If I go out to eat I can have a chicken sandwich because I'm having a chicken sandwich for lunch every day anyways. Basically, like no, I'm not having a chicken sandwich like that Wendy's makes. I'm not having that at home. But if I'm essentially having turkey lunch meat on two slices of bread with lettuce and all the things I mean, if you think about it it's kind of the same as a bun and a chicken breast and some lettuce and some sauce. Yeah, there's much more fat and stuff like that, obviously on the Wendy's one. But in my head I'm like, if I'm already having a sandwich for lunch, I can just go have a sandwich at the fast food place. It's not really that different. So for me it made a lot of sense to live like this. So this I thought of it as my neutral zone. I was very happy.

Speaker 2:

Maintenance calories are technically the amount of food your body needs to stay the same weight, with energy to function, to move, to think, to feel good, to sleep good, to process your food well, to complete the energy tasks that you have that day. If you want to work out, if you run, whatever you have to do physically energy-wise, your body requires energy to do those things you have to also consume that same amount. So energy output, energy input, calories in calories out, essentially would need to be the same to maintain your body weight, to maintain your physical being. That is your maintenance calories. I didn't know that that was a thing, but that's what I was doing when I was just maintaining my body. I was eating around the same amount every single day. I think it was around 1650 for calories, but it's been a long time now, I don't exactly remember. But that was what it took to maintain my body working out three to four days a week, going for walks. You know all the things that I wanted to do and I felt comfortable with. So that's what maintenance calories are. If you're not familiar with the term. That is, your maintenance to maintain your body.

Speaker 2:

A lot of people think that maintenance is bad. They're like, no, I don't want to be in maintenance, I want to be in a cut. So that happens because, especially women, we tend to think that we need to either be dieting or overeating, like those are the only two things. I'm either on a diet or I quit that diet and now I'm eating too much. That's why we're in this constant cycle of losing and gaining, and losing and gaining. Nobody ever talks about why the hell we can't just maintain our weight and eat a certain amount and freaking be happy. No one talks about that phase. That's where maintenance comes into play. It allows your brain to breathe. It allows your body to breathe. You can balance your hormones there. You can build strength there.

Speaker 2:

I have not really heard many conversations on maintenance calories being a place where you can gain muscle. In fact, I think a lot of personal trainers, a lot of things that I've heard on the internet, which is a terrible place to kind of get information, if you will I hear a lot that you have to be in a surplus to gain muscle. That is not true. You can gain muscle in maintenance calories, and that's what a lot of my clients do. They love to be in maintenance calories because they're building muscle and they're losing fat at essentially the same time, so the scale doesn't move very fast, but they lose inches, they gain muscle, they can lift more in the gym, they can lift more during their workouts, they can eat more, they're happy, they're sleeping better, their energy is better, hormonally more level, and so we get to this place where they're like, wow, I actually love this. I'm able to go have ice cream with my family, I'm able to eat dinner with my family, I don't have to make a different meal for myself for dinner and my family doesn't have to see me eating something else. I'm very, very happy here.

Speaker 2:

There are so many benefits to eating at maintenance calories. Some of them are better energy and better mood. Like I said, when you don't have to eat a different meal than everyone else around you, that makes you happy. When your family's eating pizza and you're having a salad out of a Tupperware dish because you prepped it and that's what you have to eat, that sucks and over time, makes you very angry, I know. And it also your energy is better at maintenance calories because you're fueling your body with exactly what it needs. So that makes sense, right? If you're eating in a deficit, you are bringing in less calories than your body needs. Your body's tired.

Speaker 2:

Other benefits are stronger workouts and recovery. You are able to lift heavier in the gym because you have more energy and you're able to recover better. So you're not as sore, you're not as weak, you're not as tired, because you have more calories that can be used to recover. So you will build muscle because you have stronger, better workouts and you'll recover faster. Your muscle will recover faster, so you'll see that muscle gain faster. Your hormones will stabilize, especially in your 30s and 40s and 50s and 60s. Ladies, this is crucial, crucial, crucial, crucial. I can't say that my hormones are stable right now and I'm in my 40s, but I'm working on it. But it does help.

Speaker 2:

And probably if I would have even eaten more, so if I would have probably been in more of a surplus and tried to gain muscle earlier on, like prior to two years from now, early, like into my thirties if I would have started lifting more, wanting to be stronger I didn't know much about it, I knew, but I was also just like. I'm happy here If someone would have said to me hey, your hormones, your metabolism, things would be so much better for you if you have more muscle on your body. And this is why I probably would have been more intentional with getting my maintenance calories instead of like 1,600 up to like 1,800. Mind you, I'm 5'3" and I weigh right now 132 pounds, but then I probably weighed 115. So, you know, I had some room to get bigger. But I didn't understand all of the things then and I was honestly happy there. So it was fine.

Speaker 2:

But if I would have known, hey, let's get you up, let's beef you up a little bit honey, that's what I would have done to save my hormones. I just didn't know any better. So take it from me, put a little weight on your body and your body will thank you, ladies, and also a healthy metabolism that isn't always in survival mode. Amen. That's another benefit of eating at maintenance. So maintenance is not a bad thing. It doesn't mean that you're just maintaining. It means when I talk to clients and I'm, you know they're like I feel like I'm in a plateau and I feel like nothing's moving and my muscle mass isn't going up and my fat's not going down and the number's not moving Like something has to be wrong with me and I'm like no, maybe your metabolism is increasing. Maybe your hormones are leveling out and increasing and improving. Maybe you're lifting heavier, and that's good. Maybe your recovery is improving. Maybe you have more energy. Maybe your mood is better. Maybe your sleep is better, maybe all of the above. Something is happening.

Speaker 2:

If you are eating enough calories and you are lifting and you're going for walks and all the things, it's not for waste. A lot of people think like the scale hasn't moved all week, the scale hasn't moved in two weeks, three weeks, four weeks. Yeah, I know my scale also hasn't moved in four weeks, even to date, and it's annoying, but I know things are happening. I'm moving more, I'm lifting heavier, I'm eating better, I'm making better choices. My body is still trying to figure out if it can trust me, like, oh, are we really cutting this time, christy, or are you just going to do it for two weeks, find some Cadbury eggs and then change your mind again, because I put my body through some shit too? So you have to give your body time to trust you. Okay, but maintenance calories, so good.

Speaker 2:

I cannot say enough things about maintenance calories. You want to stay in a cut for 12 weeks max and then you want to maintain for at least 12 weeks and then same thing with the surplus. Maintenance is where you want to live Like. That is kind of the point, so that your body is not always in survival mode, your body doesn't always have to think are we building, are we cutting? What do I do with these extra calories? Where did the calories go? Consistency, baby. Okay, think of maintenance calories as consistency.

Speaker 2:

So let's talk for a little bit about how to find your maintenance calories. I see a lot of stupid things online about. For example, I just looked one up on how to find the easiest way to find your maintenance calories without complicated math. This says and I know that every calorie calculator is different, I gave one that I like in a previous episode and I do like it, but I think it's very, very close and it's healthy. It gives you a healthy amount higher amount instead of a lower amount. But these calculators are insane. So this one says, without complicated math so the tool here is multiply your body weight in pounds by 14 to 16. So I do that. I currently weigh 132 pounds If I times that by. It says use the lower end if you're less active. So if you're less active, you would times your body weight by 14. If you're very active, you would times it by 15. I'm going to or 16, 14 to 16. I'm going to go in the middle and say 15. Times 15.

Speaker 2:

My maintenance calories are 1980, 1,980 calories. For my maintenance calories, that's probably true as far as math goes. Like that's probably. Like yeah, I could get my body there, I could eat, I could reverse diet, like that. That would be my maintenance. This is where people get stuck. So I want to make sure that I explain this well 1980, 1,980 calories. If I consume that today and tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the next day, that's more than what I'm consuming right now. So if I start to eat that, when people think if I didn't know anything about this and I did this on the calculator and I think, okay, I need to start eating 1980 calories and that will allow me to maintain my body right now, that's not true. If I started consuming 1980 calories day after day after day, I would gain weight for at least a while because I've not been eating that much, not every single day currently. Because I've not been eating that much, not every single day, currently. Okay, so when you do a calculator, that means yes, that is literally taking into account nothing except for my body weight. Okay, that's without complicated math. There are so many other calculators but they're going to push out a pretty similar number, if not higher, because that didn't take into account my like. It just took into account my weight.

Speaker 2:

It doesn't know if I'm a man or a woman. It doesn't know how old I am. It doesn't know, obviously I put in like how active I was on a scale there. It doesn't know how much I work out, like how active being, like do I walk a shit ton every day or do I because that's really active? Let's say, I walk five miles every day. That's a totally different active than whether I also lift. Like everybody's active is, quote unquote, active or sedentary or whatever is so different.

Speaker 2:

So, instead of relying on a calculator to find your maintenance and I've said this before, and this is literally the only way to do this is to track your food, exactly what you're eating. Don't change anything, because if you change it, then it won't be what you've been eating. Obviously, for myself I cannot track the last two weeks of food because I don't know exactly what I've put in my mouth. But if I were to start today and I take 14 days and I track every and I'm not cutting yet or anything, nothing, nothing, nothing. I'm going to eat exactly for the next 14 days, exactly how I did the last 14 days. I'm not going to think about it, I'm not going to change, I'm just going to do whatever I would normally do. Right, I'm going to track for 14 days. I'm going to see what happens to the scale in that 14 days, but I'm going to take that 14 days. Add it all together, divide it by 14, and that is my maintenance calories.

Speaker 2:

If my weight maintained that entire 14 days, so if today I weigh 132 pounds and in 14 days I weigh 132 pounds, then the amount of food that I ate in between those 14 days maintained my body weight. So the movement that I did and the calories that I ate literally maintained my body weight. That's movement that I did and the calories that I ate literally maintained my body weight. That's how I want you to think about this, completely neutral. There's no way for me to even say, okay, what's your age, height, weight, whatever and for me to spit out a number to say this is your exact maintenance calories. I don't know that because if let's say, obviously, if I weighed less, the number would be less.

Speaker 2:

But let's say that, well, even for this it gave me 1,980 calories, I'm not eating that much. I don't eat that much In a surplus, I eat that much maybe. Well, if I'm chowing on Cadbury eggs very easily because nine of those are like 140 calories or something, eat a whole bag of those, but on a regular basis. That's why I'm saying you have to track your regular basis, your regular. If you go out on the weekends every single weekend, track it. You have to discover what you're actually doing If you're gaining weight. So if you, in that 14 days, if you gained a pound, if you gained two pounds, that's not really much, but I would say that's not really your maintenance, that's a little bit of a surplus because you gained a little bit. So just shave off a little bit of each day. Okay, let's say it equaled out. Let's say you did all that and you divided it by 14 and it equaled out to 1,980.

Speaker 2:

We're just gonna use that number, bring it down to 1960 and start there. That's exactly how you can find your maintenance calories. So exactly how you would do this if you were reversing out. So if you want to just find your maintenance calories, that's how you would do it. You have to put in the time, you have to put in the effort, you have to track your food for two weeks. I'm sorry, there's no ifs, ands or buts about it. You have to do it. That's the only way. You cannot trust a calculator. You cannot even trust me to calculate them for you, because I don't know how much food you've been putting into your mouth over the last couple months to get you to where you are. Your starting place matters. So, so, so much.

Speaker 2:

If you are in a cut and this is a question I get a lot I've been in a cut for eight weeks and I want to reverse out. How do I find my maintenance calories? I want you to reverse out. Reverse means increase your calories. So if you are reverse dieting, a diet is decreasing, right, eating less. Reverse dieting would be eating more. So if you're in a cut and you've been eating 1,400 calories very random, but it's easy You've been eating 1,400 calories for 12 weeks and that's your cut. I want you to increase it to 1,500 calories If you've been eating enough protein in your cut, leave the protein where it is and add that 100 calories is going to go fast.

Speaker 2:

So consume more carbs and fats. It doesn't. The macros that's 100 calories is not a lot, so the macros on that are not going to matter. People are always like well then, what do I put my macros to? If I'm going to add 100 calories, I literally don't care, because if your protein is in a good place, leave it and add it in carbs or fats, I don't care. I mean, fats add up faster. But 100 calories is basically nothing, so it doesn't matter. Okay, so it doesn't matter where you pull them from, just pull them from somewhere.

Speaker 2:

So increase to 1,500 calories for a week. If you're still losing weight which happens a lot then increase to 1,600 calories. Increase by another 100 calories for a week. If you're still losing weight, increased by another 100 calories for the next week. If you finally stop losing weight and you're at 1,600, 1,700 calories I had to remember how many increases I did. If you're at 1,700 calories and you finally stopped losing weight, stay there for two weeks. Stay there for three weeks. You can play with the macro amounts, right? Maybe you do want to add some protein in at 1,600, 1,700. Play with the macros there Again.

Speaker 2:

As long as your protein is at your goal weight in grams, that's fine. As long as your protein is at a good amount, leave it and then you know, get the calories from fats and carbs. But if you get to 1,700 or wherever you get, go by 100 every week until you start to level off. And once you stop losing weight, stay there and don't move, because that if you're just maintaining now, then that's your maintenance okay. But now if you've gotten to like your goal weight and you're like, okay, I'm gonna reverse out and then you lose two more pounds the next week and then you reverse again and you still are losing, right, maybe you're now four pounds under your goal weight. That's okay, because if you stay at maintenance for a while, trust me, you're gonna be at maintenance and then you're gonna slip a little bit. You're gonna have a fun weekend.

Speaker 2:

No-transcript, like we don't need to overcomplicate it. As long as your protein's in a good place, you can add calories from fats or carbs. Carbs are going to. You're going to get more carbs because they're only four calories per gram, whereas fat is nine calories per gram. So they add up a lot faster if you add in fats. But if you're like I'm not hungry and I need to add in a hundred calories, add it in fats because it's going to go by super fast. Okay, you don't need much. So that's how to find your maintenance calories. You just increase out of it super, super slowly.

Speaker 2:

I want you to again think of this very neutral. Think of this as trusting your body. Think of this as forgetting what everyone else, all the rules that you've heard about reverse dieting, and this is exactly how you should do it. Yes, if you're going to compete in a bodybuilding show and you have specific, very, very physique specific goals that you want to hit, if you are a normal human I say normal in air quotes because I'm not but if you are a normal human like me, as normal as we can get over here, then go slow, because this is lifelong, okay. And if you're happy in that scenario with 1,700 calories and you're maintaining for 12 weeks, awesome. If you're happy there, be happy there. But if you have room to grow and put on a little muscle and get ready for perimenopause, by all means, do okay. So then what you would do is then obviously you would stay in your maintenance forever or for as long as you want to, at least 12 weeks.

Speaker 2:

If you cut for 12 weeks, give yourself 12 weeks in maintenance to get your body back to trusting you, get your hormones back, get your metabolism back. Give it time. There's no freaking rush, okay, then you can go into a surplus if you want to, or you can go into another cut. Another thing you can do too is if you're at 1,700 calories for your maintenance, you could bump up to 1,800 for a week, 1,900 for the next week, stay there for six weeks in a little surplus to get your metabolism even revved up a little bit more, and then you could cut from there. So that's how you're going to get your reverse calories, like your maintenance calories, to be more. So let's say you were at 17,. You bumped up to 18,. You bumped up to 19,. You stay there for six weeks. Yeah, you're probably going to put on two to five pounds because you're in a little bit of a surplus. It'll level off, though, and it's only six weeks From there.

Speaker 2:

Now you're at 1900 calories at your quote unquote maintenance, because that's what we're calling. It's a little bit of a surplus, yes, but then? But it's mostly going to be your maintenance. Your body would very easily adjust to that being your maintenance. If you just picked up a little more steps, maybe it's a little bit of sprinting 10 minutes of sprinting every day you could make that your maintenance pretty easily. But then from there you're going to start your next cut, cutting from 300 to 500 calories off. And that's how, over time, if you do that over and over that cycle, that's how you reverse up to that 1900, 2000, 2100 calories.

Speaker 2:

Some people think like I could never eat 2200 calories. That's insane. Yes, you can. You just have to put in a shit ton of time to be able to get your body there, and that's honestly what most people don't want to do is put in the time and the consistency, and it does allow you to get to know your body. And a lot of people just are like no, I would rather get the quick fix. I know, not you, not you. I'm not talking to you, listener, I'm talking to other people because we don't do that here. But a lot of people that I talked to were like oh my god, it's going to take like a full year to get me to bump up my maintenance calories or to be in a higher, you know, to be able to eat more. Yeah, it is going to take some time, because you've spent years mistreating your body, so it is going to take some time. But it is your body, it deserves the best. This shit is not optional. We're not just going to throw some shitty supplements in our body and call it a day and cop out. I know you're not going to do that. I know we're not going to do that.

Speaker 2:

The goal here is to eat enough to fuel your life, maintain your weight without obsessing. You don't have to reverse up, though, to 1900, 2000. I personally don't really wanna do that either, because if the more I eat, the more calories I consume for energy, I then have to work out more. I have to build more muscle, which I am currently doing, but there's a stopping point. You don't have to.

Speaker 2:

The goal isn't to eat as much as you can, because then you have to have some output, and a lot of us are just busy. We don't have time to hardly get our steps in a workout, let alone. You know, double the steps, and we have baseball games to sit at. You know we can't be moving all the time. If you're someone that your schedule allows for that and you want that, please, by all means. And bodybuilders and you know competitors they do.

Speaker 2:

You do have to eat a lot to maintain that physique and it's so impressive to me. I physically am not in a place to do that and I don't want to do that. So this takes away the fear of eating more and I really like that. It makes you realize that you don't have to be in a cut all the time. Your body will be very, very happy in maintenance and once I get my ladies used to eating in maintenance calories, they very, very, very rarely want to go into a cut, or they will for a little while and they'll say, yeah, this is just not working for me. I would rather it take six weeks longer to get to my goal than to suffer like this because you can shave off a tiny bit of your maintenance calories and lose weight a little bit slower, not being a steep cut rather than, you know, cutting out your favorite foods and going to bed hungry every single night. That gets old. So maintenance calories explained. We unfucked your maintenance calories today and I hope that this was really helpful. I hope that this answered all the questions that I get in my DMs.

Speaker 2:

If you have any other questions, please let me know. I need to start putting more question boxes up on my stories and saving them. Or, if you ask me on Spotify, you can ask a question, or you can comment, which I'm loving reading comments, by the way, thank you for leaving those. I need to get back to a couple, but you can leave a comment there. I do read all of those. Well, I think I do. I try anyway. Or you can just message me on Instagram, but I'm loving these conversations.

Speaker 2:

I'm so impressed that you are taking this information, applying it, and then, once you apply it, you get to kind of a roadblock where you're like, oh what now I don't know how to do this next step, and you come and ask me in the DMs and then I can get on here and share this information with so many other people that are going to be in that situation. So I just want to take a second to say thank you for messaging me and also I'm so proud of you for taking this information and applying it. That's literally the only reason I created this podcast was to give you this information and apply it. And then, yeah, I really just appreciate you reaching out to me and telling me that you're doing it and letting me know you have more questions, and I'm so happy to answer them. So I hope this was extremely helpful and I will talk to you in the next episode.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening to today's show. Go ahead and leave a rating and a review and, of course, follow the podcast so you don't miss out on any future episodes. And I would love it so much if you came to connect with me over on Instagram at Christy Castillo Fit. I will see you next time. Bye.