Very anxious about transitioning to maintenance

noobletmcnugget

In a couple of weeks I'm planning to transition into maintenance (maybe staggering the increase in calories over several weeks).

I'm quite nervous about it though. I'm worried about things getting out of control and regaining.

So I guess I'm just interested to hear about everyone's experiences of transitioning to maintenance.

Thanks!

Piqueaboo

Same question!

kommodevaran

Well done on your process so far!

I reached my goal weight 28 months ago, but I "feel" like I've been maintaining (a 50 pounds loss) for less than a year, since the day it occurred to me that if I just do the things that keep me normal weight, I stay normal weight. Before that, I had been a bit worried, because I had always regained after losing weight, no matter how much I wanted to keep my new lower weight. I believe this time is won't be so difficult, because I'm not eating and moving to stay normal weight, I eat and move in a way I like, independently of my weight.

Using MFP taught me how to eat, no just to count calories. I decided early on that I was going to eat, think, feel and move like a normal weight person. I would never eat anything just because it's deemed "healthy" or avoid anything "fattening". This change in attitude, not just habits, marked a new era for me. I plan my meals, make an effort to compose good meals, and I enjoy them, and I never think about this as a "diet" it's possible to "fall off". I tend to stick to three (or four if I'm more hungry) meals a day, but if I want something outside of that, it's never off limits if I think it's worth it. I wait until I'm hungry, and then I eat an appropriate portion - I weigh some things and count other things, but I'm much more lenient now. My meals are pretty similar from day to day amount-wise, but I aim for variety, taste, color. I cook a lot from scratch, and make sure my meals are balanced.

I weigh myself every morning and log it, I have a range of 3 kilos, and when the trend shows that I'm getting closer to the high end, I cut out any "extras" and only eat meals; then my weight drops again. I also accept that I'm not looking "thin", and not supposed to, either.

I don't keep a "stash" of junk food, instead I buy ingredients and other foods to execute my meal plan. I love to eat and look forward to my meals, sometimes I eat more or other foods than I planned, but I don't use food to pass time or avoid feeling (or conversely, feeding) my emotions anymore. This is so remarkably different from the years I struggled with my weight - worrying about not eating "right", whether I was regaining or not, whether I should be slimmer, how to avoid food I liked, then how to get enough of what I like (which was impossible of course), how to get away so I could eat it undisturbed, feeling like a failure, trying so hard to not think about how badly I ate, trying to not eat for as long as I could and then overeat boring food and junk food... I feel like another person now.

LivingtheLeanDream

Why anxious? What's not to embrace about getting extra calories but basically doing what you've been doing to lose. Nothing changes apart from that. maintenance rocks imo

cwolfman13

More or less maintenance going on four years...I don't do anything different really now vs when i was losing save for I eat a handful more calories and have a little more wiggle room for "fun." I still eat the same way...I still exercise on the regular (actually I exercise more)...I step on the scale a couple times per week, etc.

The only difference really is a handful more calories.

noobletmcnugget

cwolfman13 wrote: »

More or less maintenance going on four years...I don't do anything different really now vs when i was losing save for I eat a handful more calories and have a little more wiggle room for "fun." I still eat the same way...I still exercise on the regular (actually I exercise more)...I step on the scale a couple times per week, etc.

The only difference really is a handful more calories.

Four years is very impressive - congrats! You're right - maintenance should just be the same as what I'm doing now but with more calories to play with. It's not so scary when you put it like that. What's your maintenance range?

noobletmcnugget

RunRutheeRun wrote: »

Why anxious? What's not to embrace about getting extra calories but basically doing what you've been doing to lose. Nothing changes apart from that. maintenance rocks imo

When you put it like that it's not so scary! I'm glad you're enjoying it. I guess I'm just scared of reverting to my old ways and undoing all my progress. But you're right, it's just all the same stuff I'm doing now but easier because I'll have more calories to work with

LivingtheLeanDream

I think at the start of maintenence a lot of us have that fear but keep focused on staying in goal range and you'll have nothing to worry about

cbstewart88

noobletmcnugget wrote: »

In a couple of weeks I'm planning to transition into maintenance (maybe staggering the increase in calories over several weeks).

I'm quite nervous about it though. I'm worried about things getting out of control and regaining.

So I guess I'm just interested to hear about everyone's experiences of transitioning to maintenance.

Thanks!

I am too....

CaliMomTeach

I am just about there too, but finding that the calories MFP gives me at .5 pounds a week seems to be my calorie total to maintain my weight. I will adjust if I find myself losing more than 2 pounds. It's been almost two weeks at that and I actually gained almost a pound. I found easing into it to be less scary for me. I changed it from 1.5 pounds a week to 1 pound a week to .5.

LivingtheLeanDream

CaliMomTeach wrote: »

I am just about there too, but finding that the calories MFP gives me at .5 pounds a week seems to be my calorie total to maintain my weight. I will adjust if I find myself losing more than 2 pounds. It's been almost two weeks at that and I actually gained almost a pound. I found easing into it to be less scary for me. I changed it from 1.5 pounds a week to 1 pound a week to .5.

You won't have gained a true pound, it'll be water as your glycogen stores replenish now you are eating a bit more. It will settle back down soon.

rainbow198

I understand what you mean. When I was getting close to the end I was nervous as well.

Looking back my nervousness was more just a mental thing for me. I worked so hard and I did not want to gain that weight back. I saw so many people lose and regain and I did not want to be one of them.

When I no longer got that high from losing inches or pounds, creating new fitness goals helped a big deal to keep me on track.

For me, there is not much difference between when I was losing and these 4 years of maintenance.

I'm basically gaining and losing the same 3 - 5 pounds each week (water weight from pizza on Fridays, female fluctuations etc.)

I do exercise more, but not so much to burn calories...I enjoy my activities and I'm really fit so I can do a lot more.

Just keep doing what you are doing. Keep logging and weighing yourself and breathe. You can handle maintenance! Congrats!!!

lorrpb

I thought about maintenance every day for 2 1/2 years while losing 150 pounds, trying to figure out why I had failed in the past and what I would do differently this time. My gain pattern was very slow, 5-10 lbs per year for 25 years. I needed a way to keep it from creeping back on and telling myself that "5 or 10 lbs gain is not a big deal." My plan, which is no special secret, was to set a 5 lb range. When I get to the top of range, I resume eating at a slight 250-500 deficit until I get back to mid range. If that doesn't work, because I haven't actually logged for quite some time, I will resume logging until I get the proper eating pattern reestablished. I absolutely do not want to go back where I was. So far this plan has worked for about 5 months. I never did make it to the bottom of my maintenance range, but I think with more daylight and warmer weather, it will be easy to up my steps enough to help move things along. I also weigh daily and track in Happy Scale and Libra.

HappyBlues

I get where you are coming from. I've recently started lurking on the maintenance boards to learn what I can in preparation for maintenance phase. I don't know if the statistic is true but they say the chances of losing weight and keeping it off for 5 years is only 5%. That's kind of scary! I know from personal experience anyone in my life who's lost weight has gone on to gain it all back over the following years. It's been one of my concerns from the start. That is why as I have been losing the weight my focus hasn't been on fads or diet foods, but on learning how to live my life the way I already do and like, but in a more sustainable healthy way. The foods I eat now are not that vastly different from the foods I ate before all of this...a little different but not crazy different. I have lost 97 pounds but still have 25 to go yet. I would like to reach that by the end of 2017 but I am not stressing that goal. Most of the time I don't feel like I am "on a diet" so I think that is a good sign that transitioning into maintenance should be smooth. My plan is essentially going to be to treat maintenance like I treat losing, with planning meals, planning workouts, etc. It's truly been a lifestyle change. Good luck to you!

TimothyFish

For me, the weekly weigh-in is a safety check to make sure things aren't getting out of control. As long as I'm within a few pounds of my intended weight then things are good. If I'm more than five pounds one side or the other of it then I take steps to move back toward my goal weight.

beaglebrandon

HappyBlues wrote: »

I get where you are coming from. I've recently started lurking on the maintenance boards to learn what I can in preparation for maintenance phase. I don't know if the statistic is true but they say the chances of losing weight and keeping it off for 5 years is only 5%. That's kind of scary!

It's because most people either (a) celebrate after losing weight and reaching their goal, and go back to their old ways of eating and never think about diets again, stop looking at the scale and thinking they will now stay at this goal weight forever .... until oops! or (b) after a big weight loss, haven't reached goal yet, it becomes too tough to continue to do, quit at some point, and go back to their old ways of eating and never think about diets again.... until oops!

Everywhere you look there are books, diet commercials, diet food etc. for weight loss, but almost nothing for 'weight maintenance'. You need to do it on your own, watch a scale, watch how your clothes fit, and keep up a proper diet to maintain.

Plus, on maintenance you don't get all the 'feel goods' of people telling you that 'wow! you look better! How much weight have you lost?' You don't get weekly scale numbers going down, it's same-old-same-old.

It's a whole different set of things to deal with when maintaining vs losing.

JohnnyPenso

Just continue counting calories and weigh yourself a couple of times a week. Don't pay too much attention to individual weigh-ins just the trend. The key is to have faith in the science. I'll use me as an example. My last few weeks of weight loss I was around 1600 calories and losing 1 lb per week. Since 1 pound = 3500 calories on average, that means if I added 500 calories per day I should be at maintenance. It worked.

So what if i was wrong and maintenance was only 2000 and not 2100? Then I'd be in a calorie surplus of 100/day or just under 1 lb per month. I won't magically gain all the weight back overnight which is why you have faith in the science and not in the unpredictable ups and downs of your weigh in. So if you choose a maintenance level and over a month or two your weight creeps up slightly, simply adjust downward a couple of hundred until it all stabilizes, or, if you want to cut quicker, go back to a 500 calorie deficit for a couple of weeks.

STEVE142142

Maintenance is a learning process. What you have to do is take what you learned during your weight loss journey and apply it to maintenance.

When I started maintenance my weight was 220 pounds. I totally screwed maintenance up and I drop down to 208. I'm happy where I am right now and that's what I've decided to maintain it.

One of the things I learned during maintenance is that everybody reacts differently to maintenance. I ate at my maintenance calories as suggested buy the mfp app and continued to lose weight. It was just a matter of increasing my calorie intake until my weight started to stabilize. What you have to remember is the mfp app is just a guideline based on a large population basis and everybody's going to react differently

jennypapage

i know what you mean. i was kinda thrown into maintenance mode today, while i had calculated i would need at least 2 more weeks to reach my goal weight.
What i had done so far in anticipation of maintenance, was increase my calories very slowly. For a few months now i had been adding 50 calories to my daily goal (every 2-3 weeks). I did not want to go from eating x amount of calories to x+500 from one day to the next, and i had read that people's hunger grew significantly after going into maintenance. So by adding them in slowly i did not experience any more hunger than usual and my body got used to eating more again.
Since my maintenance day arrived a bit sooner than i anticipated, and i didn't have time to execute my plan 100%, i used a tdee calculator (the mfp one gave me more calories than i feel is right), and i'll eat that for a few weeks. Until now i hadn't been eating my exercise calories back, but now i'll start with 50% and re-evaluate in 2-3 weeks.

MelanieCN77

I reached my GW last weekend and am just taking things really slowly. I added back 70 cals to my allowance but because I exercise quite a lot I have lost another half pound. Tomorrow I plan to add another 50-100 cals onto my day and give it another week. I'm too nervous to make really big changes, it took me almost a year to get here, no rush to reverse course.

zalmann919

TimothyFish wrote: »

For me, the weekly weigh-in is a safety check to make sure things aren't getting out of control. As long as I'm within a few pounds of my intended weight then things are good. If I'm more than five pounds one side or the other of it then I take steps to move back toward my goal weight.

I think that the worst thing about regaining lost weight is that you can regain the weight without knowing it. You can't really lose weight in a sustainable way without keeping your eyes open -- logging your meals, planning them, exercising, and looking at that damn scale, that indispensable reality checking device. Once you stop doing that then it's easy to start losing control. It would amount to returning to sleep and not paying attention anymore. Why on Earth would I want to do that?

You see, that's what's different now. Other times I lost weight, and never really managed to "wake up," so of course, not being awake, I remained asleep and gained the weight back. Now I'm awake and it feels great.