The first step, or may be the most important step, in developing a maintenance diet is to determine how to maintenance the calorie levels. To lose weight you need to decrease your calorie, but don’t starve yourself. The goal is to use a small deficit and avoid extremely large calorie reductions.

Maintenance calorie level represents the amount of calories each day that you need to maintain your current weight. If you are eating more calories than you burn, you will gain weight. We need to calculate our body’s calorie requirements for maintenance purpose.

Too many calculations may give you a headache, so do I. That's why I'm just going to give you the simple formula. Like this

• Bodyweight x 15 calories/pound (for female)
• Bodyweight x 16 calories/pound (for male)

Simple example:

• A female weighs 185 pounds x 15 calories/pound = 2775 calories/day
• A male weighs 190 pounds x 16 calories/pound = 3040 calories/day

If you consume your daily maintenance calories, 2775 cal ( according to example above - for female), you won’t gain or lose weight. No matter how much time you spend at the gym, if you consume more calories than you burn, you'll gain weight.

I am going to use some standard estimates for each of those two gender types, to estimate your daily caloric requirement. You can adjust it by cut your calories intake a bit if you’re still gaining weight. Or if you’re still losing weight at supposed maintenance calorie levels, you need to increase calories slightly.

If your objective is to lose weight, try to consuming less and you will lose some of your bodyweight. The theory said that 3,500 calories is equivalent to one pound. So, if you create a deficit of 500 calories a day, you should be able to lose about one pound per week.

I suggest you continually monitor your weight because everyone is at risk of becoming overweight.