Maintaining is Scary
tiffanyleilarsen
Posts: 44 Member
I'm 5'2" and female. I started at 215. April 7th will be my one year anniversary. I have lost 87lbs. My goal was 129 and I'm 125-128 (it varies a lot day to day). So I beat my goal. I am trying now to transition into maintenance. But it's terrifying. I'm scared to weight more as I'm trying to figure out my new calories, but most of all I'm scared to not be allowed to loose weight anymore. I'm scared to not have a goal any more. I'm scared to not have anything to work toward. Has anyone else felt this way? I've always thought that when I got this far I'd feel elated, but I don't. All I want to do is set my goal lower so I can keep going down and keep having a goal in life. But that's not healthy for me. Please tell me that I'm not the only one who knows they do better with a life goal.
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Replies
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well… If you keep counting calories at maintenance, then you still have a daily goal!12
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Can you set yourself fitness goals and nutrition goals?
For daily or weekly goals: number of steps, number of exercise minutes, a certain amount of healthy fats and fiber,...
For an incremental goal: that's part of the appeal of running, for me. I don't have a specific goal, but I aim to improve my fitness level by increasing distance and speed and lowering my heart rate for a certain distance/speed.8 -
Congratulations! that's an incredible loss.
Maintenance for me is super easy. I just adjusted my calories to maintenance and kept and a close eye on the scale and adjust as needed.
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Your post sounds exactly like one I posted.
I’ve been in maintenance nearly four years now.
You’ll be fine. Continue logging and tracking. I’ll never “not” do that because I know how easily I would regain if I quit. I don’t mind, though. The habits are there, and I like to keep tabs on protein anyway.
One word of experience from myself, though. I’ve continued (even increased) exercise and movement in maintenance. My weight has gone up. At first it freaked me out but then I realized I was wearing the same clothes as my lowest weight. What was increasing was muscle, and muscle weighs more than fat.
Best way I can explain it is, body seemed to turn its focus inward, towards reshuffling and improving my parts, one at a time. It’s still happening, this far into maintenance. Right now it’s my thighs. They’ve suddenly thinned out and have visible muscle delineation.
Still waiting for the tummy ring of extra skin, though. That’s why God gave us humans Lycra. 🤷🏻♀️
Best advice I ever got on MFP was treat maintenance like you’ve still got five pounds to lose.
Do that and you’ll be golden. I can have a massive splurge one night, or eat during a trip, return to plan and be just fine.
You e learned great habits. Just keep implementing them, and crack down if your weight truly creeps up. I don’t ever want to be one of the “back again after I lost and regained 100” crowd.18 -
I hit Maintenance about a year ago after losing around 170 pounds and 100% it was terrifying.
Losing weight I know, Maintaining I do not.
I got into running so I set goals based around running while still logging everyday. I'm still hanging in there.9 -
springlering62 wrote: »Your post sounds exactly like one I posted.
I’ve been in maintenance nearly four years now.
You’ll be fine. Continue logging and tracking. I’ll never “not” do that because I know how easily I would regain if I quit. I don’t mind, though. The habits are there, and I like to keep tabs on protein anyway.
One word of experience from myself, though. I’ve continued (even increased) exercise and movement in maintenance. My weight has gone up. At first it freaked me out but then I realized I was wearing the same clothes as my lowest weight. What was increasing was muscle, and muscle weighs more than fat.
Best way I can explain it is, body seemed to turn its focus inward, towards reshuffling and improving my parts, one at a time. It’s still happening, this far into maintenance. Right now it’s my thighs. They’ve suddenly thinned out and have visible muscle delineation.
Still waiting for the tummy ring of extra skin, though. That’s why God gave us humans Lycra. 🤷🏻♀️
Best advice I ever got on MFP was treat maintenance like you’ve still got five pounds to lose.
Do that and you’ll be golden. I can have a massive splurge one night, or eat during a trip, return to plan and be just fine.
You e learned great habits. Just keep implementing them, and crack down if your weight truly creeps up. I don’t ever want to be one of the “back again after I lost and regained 100” crowd.
Thank you, this makes it less scary.
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Also, don't feel like a failure if your scale goes up. It will. Then down. Then up and down and down and up. Maintenance, some say, is gaining and losing the same five or so pounds over and over and over. So worry not - you still get to lose! You'll just have times you gain too. It's hard to get used to, but if you stick to it, you can do it. If you quit... Then you know what will happen.9
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Also, don't feel like a failure if your scale goes up. It will. Then down. Then up and down and down and up. Maintenance, some say, is gaining and losing the same five or so pounds over and over and over. So worry not - you still get to lose! You'll just have times you gain too. It's hard to get used to, but if you stick to it, you can do it. If you quit... Then you know what will happen.
Truth4 -
I’m glad you’re posting here. You’re not alone and you’re right - the new mindset to maintain takes a different skill set. For me, I had to replace the motivation that kept me losing with motivation that keeps me maintaining. That will look different for each person.5
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Oops, replied on wrong thread. Sorry!0
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You can also set nutritional goals. I continued to improve the quality of the food I eat by paring down salt, sat fat etc
I also set goals for blood glucose, blood pressure etc
Shifted my focus to Health
(And as others mentioned, exercise goals)8 -
Oh man, this conversation hit so close to my heart. I was there, I felt it.
It was all these amazing peeps that got me back on track. Check it out if you have the time.
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10810041/at-goal-weight-no-fireworks/p1
Maintenance was very scary. But, I realized what was scary was not having a clear direction. Yes, all the comments above are very true. Maintenance requires a different thought process. My maintenance approach after the help from this community, I started to focus on recomposition instead of weight loss. Initially it was hard, then slowly but steadily the magic started to happen. I'm still not perfect. I don't have it all dialed in. But, I know what my goals are. My maintenance goals instead of weight loss goal.
I did gain about 10 lbs since, but still wear same clothing I did when I weighed less. Strength training is magical. Recomposition results take time but, You never have to worry about what next, just pick up the next higher weight and keep moving forward.
@tiffanyleilarsen So happy for you for all that you've accomplished, I know how diligent you had to be to get here. Stay close to this community, they can get us all through a lot!6 -
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I am 5-3 and was 212 back in September I am almost to 90 pounds down now. I will be starting maintenance soon and totally agree with your post!! Reading it made me think you were reading my mind. I have worked so hard to get to this point, I am scared too!! Can I do this??? Can I pass the biggest test of all??? actually keeping the weight off?? I am almost paranoid about it and I still have 3 pounds to go. I track everything that goes in my mouth, can I intentionally increase calories at this point??1
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rhondaschmidt4 wrote: »I am 5-3 and was 212 back in September I am almost to 90 pounds down now. I will be starting maintenance soon and totally agree with your post!! Reading it made me think you were reading my mind. I have worked so hard to get to this point, I am scared too!! Can I do this??? Can I pass the biggest test of all??? actually keeping the weight off?? I am almost paranoid about it and I still have 3 pounds to go. I track everything that goes in my mouth, can I intentionally increase calories at this point??
@rhondaschmidt4, if it's super scary, maybe consider increasing calories a bit at a time, when ready? Depending on how fast you've been losing recently, maybe 100-200 daily calories, then wait a week or two or so and see what happens on the scale?
You may see a bit of a water-retention/digestive-contents bump up on the scale at first (especially with a bigger add at a time), but waiting and watching for a while (multi-weeks) will tell you whether you're stable or not at that point.
You can do this!3 -
I didn't make it. I lost all my weight and kept most off or just under a year then crept back up.
This time, I plan to remember something I read about Mister Rogers. He was reported to weigh the same throughout his life. Same weight. He weighed himself every week. We do fluctuate with water weight, hormonoes, etc, but I found that intriguing. It's an interesting goal.
You're not alone in enjoying the goal--to see the progress. It's also like dangling from a cliff when you get to your goal weight--trying to navigate where to stay without gaining more weight or actually losing more than you intend. I think the challenge is that most people don't understand that obesity is a symptom of having an off-kilter satiation meter. You can't just eat healthy foods to feel satisfied, because when you do, you may have eaten a few too many calories. So you do have to keep it in check.
I don't have the answer, but there's something to keeping track of a weight that doesn't fluctuate. New goal may simply be not to see an increase in weight and having that gold star each month for not having gained back a couple of pounds, because that's what typically happens!2 -
Fred Rogers' weight was also a very specific number that he had an attachment to. It's likely he also fluctuated but was close enough to call it good. He swam daily. They didn't have digital scales, so "close enough" was probably a routine thing for non-certified scales.
His weight was related to three words.
The first word had one letter.
The second word had four letters.
The third word had three letters.
I Love You.
One - Four - Three.
143 pounds made him smile every time he got on the scale.
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Fred Rogers' weight was also a very specific number that he had an attachment to. It's likely he also fluctuated but was close enough to call it good. He swam daily. They didn't have digital scales, so "close enough" was probably a routine thing for non-certified scales.
His weight was related to three words.
The first word had one letter.
The second word had four letters.
The third word had three letters.
I Love You.
One - Four - Three.
143 pounds made him smile every time he got on the scale.
Awe! That's super cute, endearing and somewhat weird. I love that.2 -
I did feel anxious about regain at first, but was fairly aware that this was partly magical thinking. Gaining a pound or few has about the same underpinning mechanics as losing a pound or few, just in the opposite direction. We aren't going to suddenly balloon up overnight by eating one candy bar, though it can subtly feel like that at first.
Personally, while there was that nagging anxiety, I didn't experience it as dramatically as hanging off a cliff. (I'm not saying everyone should feel the same, though.)
I feel like a piece of the underlying challenge here is that I'm wired to focus on things (most anything) only for a limited time, then it will slip away if I haven't found a way to get the necessary habits pretty much on autopilot.
Staying at a good weight long term is theoretically simple: Pay attention, and if weight goes up a few pounds and seems to stick there for a while, then cut back on eating or increase activity until it goes back down again. Things only derail if I let it get to so many pounds that the situation is overwhelming. The problem is IMO more that I may stop paying attention, maybe even let denial take over. The few pounds becomes tens of pounds, then whoopsie, I've regained the loss, or a big chunk of it.
I can't (don't want to) let that happen.
So, to me, two key things: Habits that can mostly be autopilot, and vigilance about some tracking metric.
What are the autopilot habits, and what does the vigilance rely on? I think those are both very individual.
On the habit side: According to some reports here, some people who were formerly obese do learn to use intuitive eating to satiation. Some turn to a special way of eating they can continue happily forever that tends to keep them happy at the right calorie level (carnivore, keto, vegan, Mediterranean, whatever). Me, I keep calorie counting most of the time, because it's easy for me and suits my data-geek nature; and I have certain eating patterns (not boringly repetitious to me) that I learned during loss and keep using most days now. There are other options that work for different people. Activity (exercise and daily life) can be part of the habit set, too.
The habit side may not prevent weight loss, but I think it can contribute to any regain being slow, as compared to the "lose weight fast, then go back to normal eating/activity" thing that seems implicitly to be a common approach.
On the vigilance side: Some people (including me) keep watching the scale. (I weighed myself each morning for years even before committing to lose weight. I still do that, and put the result in a weight trending app.) Some people (also including me) use fit of certain clothes. Some people use a tape measure. There are probably other options here, too.
In a way, maintaining IMO is a lot like weight loss: We need a personalized strategy and plan, and we need to commit sincerely and fully to implementing it . . . forever, ideally.
Food, eating and activity is also somewhat like financial budgeting. We sometimes cut back spending to save up money (for a house down payment, maybe, or a special vacation, or for retirement). We maybe then spend that extra when the time comes, plus spend a little extra when we're not saving up for that kind of thing. But we don't keep spending and spending and spending (beyond income) . . . or if we do, we end up bankrupt. It relies on habits and vigilance, too.
Just my opinions, though. Since losing from class 1 obese to a healthy weight back in 2015-16, I've admittedly been through several cycles of regain/re-loss, but they've been in the roughly 5-10 pound range, all in a healthy weight range for me, all in the same jeans size. (It helps that I hate to clothes shop!
) I'd been overweight to obese before that for around 30 years, most of my adult life.
For me, that's what maintenance seems to amount to: Weight creeps up a bit, then I have to creep it back down. I haven't had any dramatic sudden regain yet, and I haven't wanted (or needed) to do any dramatic calorie deficit or other intervention to re-lose lots or lose fast.
I can't say this will work forever, but so far, so good: Habits + vigilance is working OK.
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I felt this same feeling when I hit goal weight. I had a smaller amount to lose, about 25 lbs.
But, I spent years losing and regaining the same 10 lbs on my fitness pal.
I finally hit my goal weight last year in 2023. I’m now 9 months into maintenance.
I first felt elation, soon followed by fear of gaining it all back.
It probably took me a month to get out of the deficit mindset. And a couple of months after that until I lost the fear of losing control and gaining it all back.
I still log. Maybe not 7 days a week, but most days.
But, I do weigh a couple of times a week to make sure I’m on track. For me, I give myself a 2 lb don’t worry about it range.
Once I go over that number I reset my diary to lose a 1/2 lb a week.
It’s always came off pretty quickly if caught quickly. I generally lose a couple of lbs in 2 weeks and I back to goal.
My new goals are fitness goals. Currently I’m stepping up from exercising 5 days a week to 6 days a week.
Just set different goals for yourself.
Meantime, be proud of your accomplishment! It’s no small feat!!💝💝8 -
I lost 36 pounds over 18 months and kept it off for 9 months. I have been fighting rising LDL cholesterol due to Familial hypercholesterolemia and finally had to go on Statins. When that happened, I got really really hungry. I didn't realize this was a side effect, but for me it was. At 5' 4" and 137, the 1450 maintenance calories weren't enough. So I ate, still tracked the 2000-2500 calories and avoided the scale. I gained 15 pounds in 3 months. However, my face looks a LOT better and my body looks better too. My maintenance calories are 1650 and 2000 if I go for a hike. I have more food in my belly so I get up less at night to go pee. Yay! I'm going to sit at this weight a while and contemplate if I want to get lower.3 -
It was helpful to read of your fears, not that I wish them on you. I appreciate your reaching out to the community & sharing. When I reached goal, I was just as worried about gaining even a little back. I didn’t realize I would feel this way, hoping to just be happy and relax finally. It’s hard to relax though.
At first I gave myself 1500 calories a day, but I popped up 2 pounds easily. I got very anxious, not wanting to see eight months of hard work disappear. My calorie count is 1200 every day now & I still track religiously. It’s too easy to eat unwanted calories if I don’t track. Walking and getting outside everyday is a steady goal. Luckily I love to swim, but again I have to be mindful to make time. I’m accepting that this has to be a main vigilant focus for the rest of my life.2 -
@tiffanyleilarsen Thank you for being open about your fear - we definitely start with our focus on losing the weight but once that’s done the fear of going back is real. I’ve lost 42 pounds and I just need 4 more pounds til goal - as I see myself reaching my goal the fear of going back is definitely real.
Thank you all for the tips - I will add these to my toolbox as I begin the maintenance journey in a few weeks - so proud of everyone here and your commitment to a healthy you.3
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