tiny pounds and maintenance

SierraDreams

Hi! I lost a bunch of weight last year but gained 4-5 pounds back and want to make sure I don’t keep going up, up, up and away! Heard good things about this app - logging food works for me so hoping I like it here!

Countandsubtract

Good for you! That really is about the hardest part of weight loss.

It's good you're for catching it at 5 and not at 100....(like me ) this would havs been so much easier at 5, I think.

Calorie counting is so helpful . Wish I would have done it sooner.

Welcome!

You can friend me if you're looking for friends. If you're not, that's fine too.

suezeaa32

I too hit goal weight 130 in April 2022. I too have gone up and down 1-7 pounds. I need to find a maintenance plan to keep from spiriling up. Ptogram set goals and macros for me but hasn’t been helpful to staying closer to my goal weight anf food is horrible to figure out except body does not burn carbs well and feels better when I can stay on low carb food. Need some help here.

AnnPT77

suezeaa32 wrote: »

I too hit goal weight 130 in April 2022. I too have gone up and down 1-7 pounds. I need to find a maintenance plan to keep from spiriling up. Ptogram set goals and macros for me but hasn’t been helpful to staying closer to my goal weight anf food is horrible to figure out except body does not burn carbs well and feels better when I can stay on low carb food. Need some help here.

Hi, @suezeaa32 - I'm not sure whether the people who posted on this thread back in June are still active.

Congratulations on reaching goal weight: That's a huge accomplishment!

Are you wanting to continue with a calorie counting approach, at least long enough to stabilize your weight within a range you're comfortable with? If so, there are some threads that might be helpful that you could read.

First, a comment: Many folks in long term maintenance look at it as a range, not a white-knuckled (and unrealistic) attempt to stay right at a single goal weight. Of course, there needs to be a control point, and it's a little different for everyone. Some use a high-weight limit (either when they hit it briefly or stay at/above it for X days), and then cut back a little on snacks or portions when that weight appears. Others use clothes fit (I'm more like that). There are probably other options.

My point is that when you said "1-7 pounds", I thought "yeah, sounds like normal maintenance to me". I know the thought of continuing regain is stressful, but confidence will grow if you find ways to keep within reasonable bounds for a longer time period. It may be calorie counting, but it could be some other way of managing eating/activity habits.

Here's a thread that may be helpful, in that many people explain how they do it:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1422943/long-time-maintainers-how-do-you-do-it/p1

There are others in the "Most Helpful Posts" section of the "Maintaining Weight" part of the MFP Community, too.

If you like accountability threads/groups, there's one of those there for maintainers, too. Here's the current month's iteration of that:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10877067/november-2022-maintainers-check-in#latest

When I lost weight, I had used an approach that gradually remodeled my eating habits toward a good, personalized balance of appropriate calories, decent nutrition (needn't be perfect every second), tastiness, practicality, and other factors important to me. I still follow the same basic habits in maintenance. That right set of tactics going to look a little different in the details for each individual person.

For example, in your case, you might want to change your carb goal to a value lower than MFP's suggestion, and reallocate those calories to protein or fats if those work better for you. You can trust yourself to figure that out experimentally, I'd suggest, just by continuing to log, seeing what the numbers look like, and thinking about how you feel with certain eating habits. It doesn't have to be exactly hitting particular macros, ballpark is fine, and it certainly doesn't need to be perfect from the get-go. As long as you're not starting with some diagnosed nutritional deficiency, you can take your time, chip away at improvements. Humans are adaptive omnivores!

Here's the approach I used to figure out a good routine for myself, and I think the same process could possibly be used to gradually home in on good eating habits that work for you, even if they're very different from mine:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10636388/free-customized-personal-weight-loss-eating-plan-not-spam-or-mlm/p1

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that's perfect for everyone: No one approach is! But some variation on that theme has worked worked for other people besides me, as you'll see in the thread. It's just an option for you to consider.

Again, congrats on how far you've come. I'm betting you can master maintenance, too. Wishing you great success long term!