My maintenance as a woman was somewhere between 1700 and 2000 calories. With the meals that I was used to having, this was easily exceeded simply by eating more than one meal per day. So I switched to an OMAD diet and hit a plateau around 170lbs while I was dancing. I was happy with that weight so I loosened up, eventually stopped dancing, and now I use the time saved to eat healthier (or at least less processed) food instead of less food in general and maintain at that weight.

I tried biking and while I enjoyed it, it just wasn’t something I was going to keep up with consistently. The hassle alone of getting a bike down from my 3rd floor apartment was enough to end that, and the stationary bike just isn’t engaging enough. Again, any progress I make from that is gone from one bad eating choice, which is going to happen if you change your activity level without any consideration for nutrition. This isn’t a magical world of pure numbers, there is human psychology involved.

I do think the dancing boosted my metabolism a bit or maybe something changed in my lifestyle like returning to office instead of WFH and now I’m more consistently maintaining at just over 2000 calories. I really wouldn’t be able to even simply maintain without reading nutrition labels and limiting my snacking though.