Why does this seem scarier?

freesiasun5

I am downright terrified to declare myself in maintenance.

Losing weight seemed so easy. I knew the formula. I knew staying under goal had positive consequences and going over had negative consequences. It was an absolute I could easily deal with.

Maintenance seems so foreign to me. The majority of my life has been spent either gaining weight or losing weight.

Now my brain has constant battles that go like this:

"You should TOTALLY have taco bell tonight! You've lost 55 pounds. You deserve it!"

"That's how you got into this mess in the first place, dummy. Best go have a Lean Cuisine and stay 300 calories under."

How long does it take to get into the rhythm of maintaining, accept it as a new normal, and not feel like everything you put in your mouth will get you right back where you started?

jessicarobinson00

I AM RIGHT HERE!!! I just hit my goal weight last Friday (15 lbs less than my original GW!). I feel like I'm in the yo-yo pattern of I should be eating more, then feeling like I'm eating too much and then cutting. I am barely a week into this and I am terrified that I will end right back where I was...

nxd10

Actually, it's just as easy. You still follow the formula.

Up you calories to what MFP calculates for you. Log everything. Eat what you're hungry for within that limit. If you gain outside your maintenance range (I gave myself 5 pounds that I considered to be where my normal fluctuations would fall), lower your calories by 250 or so and see what happens. If you lose too much, up your calories a little.

Every day you get on that scale and you're in the 'success' zone you get to do the happy dance.

It took my a while to believe I was now thin - I started by just upping to half of my previous deficit. But I did (it's been 4 years). Biggest problem: My body responds to both calories and unrefined carbs. My natural inclination when I upped my calories was to add back in more cookies, bread, etc. For me, that was a mistake, because I bloat. So I balance my extra calories and include more protein and fat, as well as carbs. (Ice cream does this beautifully.) One I found my feet, I've had no problems.

BTW, I just learned to listen to my body. A little treat is great. More isn't better. Overeating makes me feel gross. I eat what I'm hungry for and leave the rest on the table. If I'm hungry, I eat more. I always I hit my weekly goals.

Congratulations!

segacs

This is me, too!

I know logically that it's all just math; the same math that got me to this point will keep me at this point. But I'm still struggling with the psychological part, the part that tells me "sure, eat all the cookies, it's no big deal, you lost 50 pounds!"

I guess we just have to stick with it until it becomes second nature.

bkstein40

I am having the same thought process, I am 7lbs away from my goal, have lost 23lbs so far, so I have done really good. I am really nervous about the maintenance process, I read in another thread to gradually start adding calories, so this past week I added 100 to my daily intake, today I have gained back 1.5lbs, which could be water weight I will give it a couple of days hopefully it is just me being nervous. So today I am going back down to my low calorie count 1.5lbs per week til I meet my goal. Then I will work on the maintenance process, don't want to get ahead of myself.

One question I have is, do the people around you tell you, you are too thin. ( my mother-in-law in particular, I think she just wants me to start eating everything she bakes again) She keeps calling my journey a diet, I am no longer calling it a diet, it is a lifestyle change for the better of me. I am 45, 5'7 157, with a goal to be 150. With my body type I can appear to look thin, but the scale and BMI says I am border line overweight.

Dootzy1

This is an important post for many of us. I have regained. Repeatedly. Don't want to again. Somehow, we have to face our fears with confidence that we have the tools. I love the idea of the self talk from nxd10.

BikeTourer

bkstein40 wrote: »

I am having the same thought process, I am 7lbs away from my goal, have lost 23lbs so far, so I have done really good. I am really nervous about the maintenance process, I read in another thread to gradually start adding calories, so this past week I added 100 to my daily intake, today I have gained back 1.5lbs, which could be water weight I will give it a couple of days hopefully it is just me being nervous. So today I am going back down to my low calorie count 1.5lbs per week til I meet my goal. Then I will work on the maintenance process, don't want to get ahead of myself.

One question I have is, do the people around you tell you, you are too thin. ( my mother-in-law in particular, I think she just wants me to start eating everything she bakes again) She keeps calling my journey a diet, I am no longer calling it a diet, it is a lifestyle change for the better of me. I am 45, 5'7 157, with a goal to be 150. With my body type I can appear to look thin, but the scale and BMI says I am border line overweight.

Sounds like me, 50 5'6 at the top of my BMI, my size 8 start to feel big. Before I hit midpoint I'm in a size 4. I would look horrible at the low end of BMI. To be honest I am happy to be anywhere between top of BMI and midpoint, because my blood work is great and insurance/work wellness programs back off.

In terms of your mother in law, tell her to back off I trust my doctors recommendation over yours. There are certain people you have to discount or it will drive you nuts.

dakotababy

Ugh. I am exactly here. OP put this exactly how I have been feeling, which is scary! It is like I am constantly afraid of gaining weight, but at the same time - I do not want to keep losing either (and if I had to pick one...I would rather lose more lbs than start gaining!)

I find it mentally and emotionally exhausting. I wish I could just keep in a deficit forever. My experience of transitioning from losing to maintaining has not been smooth. On a plus - I have not gained anything. I think it might just be a process of trusting myself to be able to increase my calories and not gain a whole bunch of weight again. Trust myself that I can work out, Trust myself to get back on track if I need to. Trust that I know what I am doing...even if it feels like I dont.

kami3006

Yep, it's a pretty common mental block when moving to maintenance. Even worse when you move onto a bulk. It took me about 2 months to be comfortable with it. I went up 100 a week until maintenance and after about 4-6 weeks, I saw that the scale and my measurements were holding steady and it became easier.

freeoscar

What's been difficult for me (Month 5 of maintenance now) is mentally dealing with the fluctuations within normal. I guess because when I was losing I ate similar types of foods all the time so I lost at a fairly steady clip - no real plateaus or gains. Now I'll gain or lose a few pounds at a time (I weigh weekly) with seemingly no correlation to CICO for that week. And of course when I gain I get nervous and think OMG 4 lbs - that'll take 6-8 weeks of eating at a deficit to lose. I just stick to my plan and so far CICO eventually evens things out, but mentally it sucks.

BurnWithBarn2015

Same here.
Its a mind set thing for me.

Now i made myself a deal/promise when i started to lose weight. And i kept it.
So i started over a few weeks back ( i maintained before for 20 years till i got injured and gained a lot so i know what it is to maintain).

So i made a deal again an agreement with myself

1. Keep weighing myself every morning and eat 1500 calories 6 weeks and see what happens.
2. tweak up or down after 6 weeks and up to 1600 when i am still losing or stay the same.
3. 4 weeks
4. still happy up again. and repeat. Only stop it and tweak down when the gain is really a gain and not a fluctuation.
5. end result weigh ones a week.

Now by doing it this way i hope for me that my mind get used to the more eating which i do at the moment.
I eat the same i ate before, only more
wooohoo instead of half an avocado i eat a whole lol and one serving of ice cream is now 2 when i have the room for it.
So i eat more dense foods. The skinny products ( light) are slowly getting replaced for the full versions etc.
But my eating habits stay the same.

But i know exactly what you mean. I also still count very accurate and slowly let go of the accuracy and mindset of losing.
I even had 2 days ago a big serving of ice just because i had calories left and exercised a bit more that day.
I was not hungry but i just said hit that level!

So that is my strategy for now...if it works? well i sure hope so lol.

ahoy_m8

freesiasun5 wrote: »

...The majority of my life has been spent either gaining weight or losing weight.

I'm not sure if this is a helpful/less scary way of looking at it, but for me, maintenance has been spent either gaining or losing weight--it's just that the range has been 5 lb instead of 55 lb. And as @nxd10 said, the daily process is really similar--just with a few more calories. Sometimes I slack on logging, but when I get to the top of that 5 lb range, I tighten up the logging and that gets the job done.

Eta excellent job reaching gw!

WinoGelato

OP this is something that I struggled with as well. I lost the weight I needed to lose, about 25 lbs in a year. I gained a little back due to complacency, buckled down again, lost it back and then went a few pounds past my original goal weight, so I thought, "hey, maybe I need a lower goal weight, let's keep going!". Problem was, I stalled out, and really didn't want to keep restricting or stressing about the numbers. So I ended up in a comfortable four pound range, with my original goal weight being the top end of the range, and I stayed there for several months but was still set to "lose" in MFP.

For me, the hardest part was just declaring myself in maintenance and officially pulling the trigger to make the necessary system changes (I use a FitBit synched with MFP) to let the systems know that I'm done trying to lose, rather than just looking like I'm in the longest plateau ever...

Here's what I did recently (also note, I use MFP Net Calorie method and eat back the FitBit exercise adjustments)

• I changed my weight on MFP (increased it about 2 lbs to the mid-point of my range, not the low end of my range which was totally a vanity thing since I really wanted my ticker to show an even 30 lbs lost but who cares, tickers don't go on anything anyway).
• Changed my goal to "maintain my weight" in both MFP and FitBit
• Increased my NET Calorie Goal to 1750 (still a little below what MFP thinks is my non exercise maintenance (1890) but I like to have a bit of a buffer.

Here's what I've noticed...

• Although I didn't increase my calorie goal much at all, I am a little more paranoid about staying under it, closing out with 100-200 or even more left at the end of each day (until the weekend at which time I have been really making up for it!). I think when I was set at a definite deficit, I knew there was a buffer built in there, and always was fine with eating right up to that or even going over since I knew that I had room before exceeding my maintenance.
• My exercise adjustments from FitBit are much bigger now. I don't know if it is partly because I increased my weight so it thinks I have a higher baseline, or because FitBit was adjusting me for a loss, but I don't feel like I've increased my exercise TOO much (maybe more steps in the FitBit challenges) and I'm getting adjustments of 400+ cals instead of the 200 or so I was getting before. That's also leading to me not totally trusting this yet.
• I've actually shifted down to the lower end of my maintenance range. No real shock there, since like I said above, I'm manually keeping myself in a bit of a deficit, but it is kind of nice to call myself "in maintenance" and have lost a couple of pounds from where I was hovering in the spring/summer.

So yeah, I can relate to your post, but I think as others have said, the nice thing is, now all of us know how to be successful, and we are committed to maintaining our success, so the main thing is to just relax a little (not too much) and keep an eye on things so that you can make corrections before things totally go off the rails.

Zinka61

I'm in the same boat. I started on MFP last Feb 2nd and lost 25 lbs fairly easily and reasonably quickly. I've been in "maintenance" for a few months now, but I've gained about 4 lbs back and seem to go back and forth between "diet mode" and a food free-for all. My schedule has gotten a *lot* busier this fall, along with challenges, and while I'm staying mindful of nutrition (In my logging, I keep an eye on protein, iron, calcium, potassium and vitaman C) I can't say I've truly learned moderation. I'm getting less exercise in and am prone to grabbing something fast to eat when I'm in a hurry and feeling stressed. Also, it seems like my "maintenance" calories are barely more than I allowed myself while I was trying to lose. Back to the drawing board and aiming to lose about 5 lbs again now...!

47Jacqueline

Yep. Maintenance can be very scary. Especially if you maintain a dieting mentality (I'l lose the weight and then I'll be done), And the statistics don't support maintenance success.

So, if you are commited to staying at maintenance, it really means changing the way you live. Period.

Alassonde

I think maintenance is more scary because if you go over calories too much, you gain, where generally when you are losing weight if you go over calories you just don't lose. At least that's how my mind sees it!

pita7317

Maintaining for seven months now. Seems easier to me than losing because I have learned a new lifestyle and way of eating/portions. I eat a little more these days but rarely. I know when I am full now and when to stop eating. Such a huge difference in how I used to feel/ look. Mind boggling. Have dropped 48 lbs.

Maries_wine_calories

bkstein40 wrote: »

One question I have is, do the people around you tell you, you are too thin. ( my mother-in-law in particular, I think she just wants me to start eating everything she bakes again) She keeps calling my journey a diet, I am no longer calling it a diet, it is a lifestyle change for the better of me. I am 45, 5'7 157, with a goal to be 150. With my body type I can appear to look thin, but the scale and BMI says I am border line overweight.

Hi, @bkstein40 we are very similar in stature and age and weight! I am not worried any longer about my BMI or healthy weight range> they do not apply to my body, I look fantastic and no doubt you do as well.
I'm at maintenance now for many months and I am very surprised to find that my shape has continued to progress down another pant size all the while I was at the same scale weight. I've gotten the same reaction from others: "are you STILL dieting?" It is in fact, a lifestyle choice. I went from cutting calories and planning my food goals to realizing in maintenance that I needed even more of the same planning to add calories! When I was heavier and eating mindlessly I was undermining just how active I was at my job. It's quite important that you value the macros in your every day life but you need to get back to "real" food. I don't mean clean eating (god if I hear that phrase one more time...), I mean your MIL's baking. Have half of the square or one cookie. I mean taco bell. Have the al fresco taco and skip the loaded fries...all your choices to make. So much wonderful food fits in your macros and fuels your activity! Congratulations on all that you've already accomplished!!

AnnPT77

This is a helpful and timely thread for me: Thank you all.

I'm getting close to GW (6-12 pounds, probably - I'm looking at it as adjustable based on how I feel/look), trying to increase calories gradually to coast into it, and finding that process a little scary. I didn't (and don't) feel like I generally have a seriously disordered relationship with food, not a binge-er or much of an emotional eater, just someone who likes food & has tended to eat too much of it (with a little bit of boredom eating or habitual snacking in there).

It has really surprised me to find how discombobulated I am about finding my maintenance level! It's really comforting to know this is normal, and to hear some of your strategies.

Again, thanks!

BurnWithBarn2015

Alassonde wrote: »

I think maintenance is more scary because if you go over calories too much, you gain, where generally when you are losing weight if you go over calories you just don't lose. At least that's how my mind sees it!

Very true

But you have to realize that you didn't gain (all) that weight overnight.
You let yourself gaining and gaining etc

So going over or a gain and going back on track will help you maintain your weight for the long term.
For me this means and i think for many of us
Keep on checking and moderation.

EzRemake

If you've gotten into the habit of tracking calories daily, there's nothing to worry about. You have the tools you need to maintain your weight forever, it's like riding a bike. All you need to do is keep your willpower up, and you'll be golden.

What you're experiencing is normal, I went through that as well when I transitioned over to maintenance, and then went through it twice as bad when starting a bulk. Eventually you realize that gaining weight while exercising is completely different than before when you did nothing.