Question about maintenance after significant loss

Hello everybody.

The story goes like this. Four months ago i decided to lose some weight which i had gained over the course of 3 years from some unhealthy habits.... Such as drinking a bottle of vodka every night and then avoiding death(kidding...maybe) by consuming a billion calories before passing out. I will never do this ever again. I probably could have lost weight just by quitting the boozing over time but being the impatient youngster I am, i decided to go all out with diet and exercise. I did this:

1200 calories a day 440 of those always go to about 6oz of booze (not a drop more)which i drank over a period of 2 hours before bed. The remaining calories went to a single meal about an hour before bed.
5 or 6 days a week incline walking 3.5 mph (8%) for for about 54 minutes...(untill the calorie meter read "666"...i'm a dork)

When I began these WERE my stats 4 months ago:
Age: 25
Sex: M
Height: 5' 11"
Weight: 205

I lost almost 70 lbs friends, in 16 weeks at that. So I'm sitting here at 138 lbs. I start thinking to myself "HEY maybe i should see what happens if i dont run every day and just consume those 1200 calories. So i weighed in after a day of not running to see what i weighed without losing all the water weight through the hour long walk and was 138....4 days later...i'm the same weight. What gives? How much water weight can a man have? Figured i would at least lose a half of a pound. Maybe I have to piss or something. I'm not quite sure what the deal is, but i'm a bit scarred that i might somehow maintain at 1200 calories. Next week I will try upping my cals to say 1600 and working out everyday again just to see what happens. You know, toying with it a bit.

Question I have for you cats is this one....Is it common to have to maintain at such a low caloric level after such intense loss? I really wanted to get to my desired weight and just *POOF* go up to 1700 cals and not do s*$t for a hot minute. But i assumed it wasn't that simple. I'm looking to peruse some of you guy's experiences and post-loss maintenance stories. Particularly from easygoing dudes or dudettes who enjoy the finer things in life. I'd like to hear from people who didn't have to struggle with it because for me it was all a very easy and amusing mind/will power game and control scenario. I enjoy those sorts of things. Ive noticed i'm a bit hungrier than i was before...It sure would be nice to munch down on a little more food. Im just gonna go ahead and say that I think if i had some metabolic problem i wouldn't have been able to lose like i did and stay so stable, mentally and physically. Being that its been so little time i guess i'm being impatient. But perhaps this will get the ball rolling.

I'm just going to preempt by saying "multiple meals per day" thing is not universal. Ive eaten one meal a day my entire life. The human body is a well oiled machine, incredibly efficient. the little effect that eating multiple meals per day can have is minimal and i think relates to people who have conditioned their bodies that way, other cultures dont eat like americans either. there are studies that suggest eating an hour before bed is the most efficient time to eat. but i wont shove that down your throat, please dont shove your dogma down mine. no alarmists please.

Thanks in advance