How can i maintain a healthy weight? Maintenance sucks!

emlee01

You cannot accept complacency. You're not dieting, you are making a life change. After you lose, you adjust enough to stop losing weight -not losing momentum, passion and the desire to be the healthiest you can be. You'll still need to watch what you eat and exercise - there's no other way!

Bump!

For what it's worth, I've been on "maintenance" for about a year, and every time I've started to lose sight of "making a life change", the weight has tried to come back with a vengeance. You can't wish to stay the same weight any more than you wished to reach your goal weight in the first place. It's been harder for me to maintain than to lose the weight because I wasn't always committed to maintaining the vigilance necessary to protect what I achieved. Maybe it's the same for you, or maybe not.

In any case, you have to ask yourself what is more important: foregoing inconvenience to have a healthy life or settling for less than the goals that motivated you in the first place. Once you make that choice, and I hope it's the 1st one, you have to come up with new ways to challenge yourself. There are plenty of folks here on MFP who are happy to support you.

All the best in this next stage of your journey!

tinglesby

You cannot accept complacency. You're not dieting, you are making a life change. After you lose, you adjust enough to stop losing weight -not losing momentum, passion and the desire to be the healthiest you can be. You'll still need to watch what you eat and exercise - there's no other way!

Bump!

For what it's worth, I've been on "maintenance" for about a year, and every time I've started to lose sight of "making a life change", the weight has tried to come back with a vengeance. You can't wish to stay the same weight any more than you wished to reach your goal weight in the first place. It's been harder for me to maintain than to lose the weight because I wasn't always committed to maintaining the vigilance necessary to protect what I achieved. Maybe it's the same for you, or maybe not.

In any case, you have to ask yourself what is more important: foregoing inconvenience to have a healthy life or settling for less than the goals that motivated you in the first place. Once you make that choice, and I hope it's the 1st one, you have to come up with new ways to challenge yourself. There are plenty of folks here on MFP who are happy to support you.

All the best in this next stage of your journey!

Thanks!! i really appreciate the support!!

p.s. ive seen it three times now...what does bump mean??

RobynLB83

This is besides the point, but HoneySprinkle, I LOVE that bikini!

csuhar

A challenge with maintenance is that, like maintenance on a vehicle, it still takes a degree of work. Logging food and exercise accurately is still important. The main thing that changes is your caloric goal, because you're not willing to lose weight.

The other thing that is different when maintaining rather than changing your weight is that you do need to expect a degree of yo-yo movement. When you were losing weight, you probably had times you lost faster than others because of fluctuations in your actual deficits. Because maintenance is focused on a stationary point, this will manifest itself as going above and below your target. It may be better to change your approach to a "target weight range" that goes above and below your specific target weight. That way, you still have those red flags that pop up and tell you to take a hard look at what you're doing when your weight changes, but you won't have to stress out about being right at X pounds and you don't need to fret when your weight changes because life got in the way. In my case, 5 pounds above and below tends to provide enough leniency to have fun (like going on cruises or enjoying the holidays) while still keeping me from getting out of control.

micheleld73

You cannot accept complacency. You're not dieting, you are making a life change. After you lose, you adjust enough to stop losing weight -not losing momentum, passion and the desire to be the healthiest you can be. You'll still need to watch what you eat and exercise - there's no other way!

Bump!

For what it's worth, I've been on "maintenance" for about a year, and every time I've started to lose sight of "making a life change", the weight has tried to come back with a vengeance. You can't wish to stay the same weight any more than you wished to reach your goal weight in the first place. It's been harder for me to maintain than to lose the weight because I wasn't always committed to maintaining the vigilance necessary to protect what I achieved. Maybe it's the same for you, or maybe not.

In any case, you have to ask yourself what is more important: foregoing inconvenience to have a healthy life or settling for less than the goals that motivated you in the first place. Once you make that choice, and I hope it's the 1st one, you have to come up with new ways to challenge yourself. There are plenty of folks here on MFP who are happy to support you.

All the best in this next stage of your journey!

Thanks!! i really appreciate the support!!

p.s. ive seen it three times now...what does bump mean??

I've determined bump means that the person likes the post, doesn't have anything to add at that time and wants to be able to return easily to track the additional posts. But that's just my best guess.