Picture two versions of you on the first Monday in January.
The first one is dreading the scales. She's bloated, sluggish and already planning the punishing diet that starts "tomorrow". December happened to her. She's not quite sure how.
The second one had a brilliant Christmas. She ate the turkey, the roasties and the mince pies. She raised a glass. She didn't count every mouthful and she didn't spend the season feeling guilty. And she walks into January feeling calm, in control and exactly where she planned to be.
The difference between those two women isn't willpower. It's one number.
The number nobody ever gave me
When I was at my heaviest, I weighed over 100 kilos. I was convinced I was big-boned. I was convinced it was my thyroid. I cooked everything from scratch, so in my head I was eating healthily.
Then my sister made me fill in a food diary.
I was eating around 3,500 calories a day. My body needed about 2,000. I was eating roughly 1,500 calories a day more than I needed, every day, and I genuinely had no idea. Nobody had ever shown me where my upper limit was.
That number has a name. It's your maintenance.
What maintenance actually is
Your maintenance calories are the most you can eat in a day without gaining weight. That's it. It's not a target you have to hit. It's not "giving up". It's your upper limit.
Think of it like a budget. Your income is what your body burns. Your spending is what you eat and drink. Spend up to your budget and you're absolutely fine. Overspend now and again and it's not a disaster. Overspend every day for six weeks and you'll feel it in January.
Your maintenance depends on your age, height, weight and how active you really are. And here's the bit that catches so many of us out: if you work at a desk all day, you're classed as sedentary, even if you go to the gym four times a week. One hour of training doesn't undo eight hours in a chair.
Why your maintenance shrinks when you lose weight
When I weighed 100 kilos, my body needed around 2,000 calories a day just to stay the same. Today I'm around 65 to 67 kilos, and my maintenance is closer to 1,400.
Nothing is broken. There's simply less of me to fuel. This is called metabolic adaptation, and it's completely normal after weight loss. But if you go back to eating the way you did at your heaviest, you will go back to that weight. Knowing your new number is what protects the results you've worked so hard for.
"I was good all week, so why have I gained a pound?"
You know this one. You're spot on Monday to Friday. Then Saturday night happens: a bottle of wine, a pizza, a chocolate bar on the way home. Monday morning, you're up a pound and you're convinced something is wrong with you.
There's nothing wrong with you. You're not broken. You just ate way over your maintenance on one night, and it wiped out the whole week's deficit and then some. When you know your number, you have the power to stop that happening.
What the research says about Christmas
We're often told we gain half a stone over the festive season. A study that actually weighed 195 adults before, during and after the holidays found the average gain was much smaller: about 0.37 kg. The catch? Most people didn't lose it again in spring or summer. It stayed. Year after year, those little festive gains quietly add up (Yanovski, 2000).
So the goal isn't to white-knuckle a diet through December. It's to not gain. And that's exactly what maintenance is for.
There's even some evidence that planned breaks at maintenance can help. In one trial, men with obesity who alternated two weeks of dieting with two weeks at maintenance lost more fat than men who dieted non-stop, and their weight held steady during the maintenance weeks (Byrne, 2018). It was a small study in men, so we don't want to overstate it. But it backs up what we see with our women: stepping into maintenance on purpose isn't falling off the wagon. It's strategy.
Plan your year like an athlete
Here's what I ask the women in NOURISH(HER)™ to do, and what I'd love you to do this week:
- Get clear on your goal. Fat loss? Body recomposition? Simply not gaining?
- Decide the maximum time you want to be dieting for. Not the end number. The maximum time.
- Grab your calendar for the next 6 to 12 months. Block out Christmas, holidays, birthdays, family visits.
- Make those blocks maintenance. Then break your fat-loss phases into chunks that fit in between.
No more forever diet. No more "I'll start again on Monday". Just a plan you chose.
Every time foods and sometimes foods
Inside maintenance, we use the 80/20 rule. Around 80% of your food comes from "every time" foods: protein, veg, fruit, whole foods that come from the earth. Around 20% is for "sometimes" foods (that's Cat's name for them and I love it): the mince pie, the glass of fizz, the chocolate.
And know yourself. If one sweet sends you into a sugar spiral, be honest about that and plan around it. That's not restriction. That's self-awareness.
Your non-negotiables
When the diary goes mad in December, come back to three things:
- Three proper meals a day. No skipping.
- Protein at every meal. If I don't have protein, I'm hungry an hour later and food takes over my head. I don't want that noise.
- Veg on the plate.
That's it. Simple enough to repeat on the busiest day of the year.
The real gift: self-trust
Every time you keep a small promise to yourself, you build self-trust. It's a muscle, and it grows one rep at a time. Three meals today. Protein at breakfast. A walk after Christmas lunch. Keep the promise, celebrate it, go again.
So imagine it. Christmas Day. You're at the table with the people you love. You're not counting, you're not panicking, you're not planning a punishment. You know your number. You've got a plan. You're present.
And January? January is just the next chapter. Not a rescue mission.