Scared of maintenance!!

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  • anubis609
    anubis609 Posts: 3,966 Member
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    Maintenance is the ultimate goal. Unless you're competing, actually even if you were, to maintain a level of health and fitness for life is what we all want, making educated adjustments accordingly. No one wants to successfully lose/gain weight just to gain/lose it all over again and restart the cycle.
  • apullum
    apullum Posts: 4,838 Member
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    Here is what my past year in maintenance has looked like. It may look like dramatic fluctuations, but check the y axis; the trend line stays in my maintenance range of 110-115. This is why I think it’s important to understand and be okay with normal everyday weight variation. (The huge drop recently is because I was sick and not able to exercise; I lost water weight that came back when I started working out again.)

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  • frankiesgirlie
    frankiesgirlie Posts: 667 Member
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    I absolutely understand your fears. I hit my goal weight and then skipped right over maintenance and gained the 12 lbs back guickly. 🙁🙁 I just now hit my maintenance weight again this week and I plan to go under it by 2 lbs, just to give myself some mental wiggle room. ( my goal weight was 149, and the mental difference of 149 and 150 is tremendous for me, so I’m going down to 147 just for buffer.
    After I lose the additional 2 lbs, I intend to add on calories very slowly. Only upping them by 100 calories a day for the first few weeks. I’m afraid of awakening the beast of an appetite I can get from nerves. My deficit was only about 350 calories a day, so it’s quite easy to eat over that, even though it didn’t seem easy to regularly get that 350 calorie deficit.
    Please don’t let your worries ruin this accomplishment for you. You’ve got this!!!
  • nowine4me
    nowine4me Posts: 3,985 Member
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    I get panned for saying this, but it’s true. Maintaining is the same as dieting, but with a handful more calories. Like an Apple and a serving of peanut butter. Ramp up your calories slowly and you’ll know when you get there. I’m 5-7” and active and maintain at 2100.
  • apullum
    apullum Posts: 4,838 Member
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    nowine4me wrote: »
    I get panned for saying this, but it’s true. Maintaining is the same as dieting, but with a handful more calories. Like an Apple and a serving of peanut butter. Ramp up your calories slowly and you’ll know when you get there. I’m 5-7” and active and maintain at 2100.

    This is so true for a lot of us. I only get 200 calories more in maintenance than I did while I was losing. (I’m really short.). Those 200 calories make a difference, though.
  • emilysusana
    emilysusana Posts: 416 Member
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    I lost 30 lbs 2 years ago and was scared of maintenance. I read all the maintenance threads and obsessed about how I was going to handle it. Then I did gain it all back. Of course, I didn’t gain it all back while continuing to strictly count my calories, keeping up the same exercise routine, etc.

    What went wrong? First, I noticed that adding back a couple hundred calories made me more hungry (I was not hungry while losing, I really hit a good balance in the foods I enjoyed that kept me full at a deficit). I think I was also seriously motivated by seeing the scale drop. I should have set new goals, perhaps, non-scale ones. And then when life got really busy, I didn’t muster the motivation to make all the efforts I needed to keep on track. Old habits came back, and then self-sabotage.

    Anyway, there’s a lot of good advice on this thread, and I’m already trying to think about how I’ll do it differently (once I lose these last 25 lbs!). Good luck OP.
  • MelanieCN77
    MelanieCN77 Posts: 4,047 Member
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    apullum wrote: »
    nowine4me wrote: »
    I get panned for saying this, but it’s true. Maintaining is the same as dieting, but with a handful more calories. Like an Apple and a serving of peanut butter. Ramp up your calories slowly and you’ll know when you get there. I’m 5-7” and active and maintain at 2100.

    This is so true for a lot of us. I only get 200 calories more in maintenance than I did while I was losing. (I’m really short.). Those 200 calories make a difference, though.

    Yeah 200 cals is the edge I balance on, also. I had a hard time adjusting to maintenance - dieting was mentally simple by comparison as goals and benchmarks are motivating and guiding. Making new, other goals intermittently (fitness, nutrition) seems to be helpful.

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