There will always be periods of time, whether it’s weeks, months, or years, where you may not be able to maintain your leanest or fittest point, and that’s normal. But if you take time to build foundational skills and habits, you can keep that maintenance range in a place that feels good to you. And you can always return to some of those more time-intensive skills and practices when capacity allows. 

A maintenance phase is arguably the most important season of our nutrition since it’s where we can best focus on the habits that help us find harmony with our physical, mental, emotional, and social health. Without the prioritization of changing our bodies, the other aspects of our lives that we value can better be at the forefront. However, that doesn’t mean that body composition can’t remain in the periphery. The foundational habits that we develop before or alongside a focused fat loss phase, with the goal of long-term physical change, continuously support small aesthetic changes over time.

Reverse diets may also be helpful if you’ve been eating a deficit for a long period of time and want to get an idea for what your current maintenance calorie needs are.  It can be beneficial to slowly increase calories to make sure you’re keeping the habits you established while in your calorie deficit, rather than just considering the end of your deficit to be a signal to just stop being mindful of your nutrition altogether. Chances are that your ideal maintenance nutrition doesn’t look much different than your deficit nutrition – just slightly larger meals and a little extra flexibility.

It’s just as important to develop strategies for times when you don’t have the capacity for laser focus as it is to maintain consistency when you’re aggressively pursuing a goal.  Maybe even more so, because you will have times in your life where your nutrition-related goals have to take a back seat.