I think I've FINALLY discovered the secret to maintenance!
Chocoholic55555
Posts: 173 Member
Some background;
My 80ish pound weight loss has been my excessive pregnancy weight. It's been off for a while now, but I've struggled with the maintenance phase. I've been moving in circles of going over board on calorie binges (when feeling down in the dumps for example) then feeling I had to restrict my calories and diet again for a few days. After a few days f depriving myself, I'd end up on another binge ..... you get the picture.
I'd also become obsessed with weighing myself . I weigh myself every day (I know some people frown upon that, but it's a habit I've got myself into and something I'm reluctant to give up). Every time the scales showed me something I didn't want to see, I'd restrict my calories for a few days, then binge, etc etc........
I realised that this has to stop. Is not healthy and quite frankly it's doing my head in! Maintenance shouldn't be this hard.
So, I read around, and this is the conclusion I've come to........
- I still weigh myself every day but I enter my weight into this app
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/true-weight-lite/id304080586?mt=8 . It's called True Weight and uses a formula that I vaguely remember from school called moving / weighted averages. It basically smooths out weight fluctuations over the month, showing the trend. Basically it shows you if overall you are REALLY gaining, losing or maintaining your weight.
- I eat like the skinny me! In a nutshell, I've calculated the calories I should be eating at my "ideal" weight (112lbs for me, I'm 5'4") and that's my net goal every day. I exercise and eat back every calorie I've earned. If I fall off the food wagon & binge, gaining a few lbs, I've stopped the "dieting" the following day. If I keep eating to my goal calories, I will eventually be at my goal weight. It's the "Eat More To Weigh Less" principle and you can read more about it here http://www.myfitnesspal.com/forums/show/3834-eat-more-to-weigh-less - they explain it much better than I could.
- I wear my fitbit all day every day! It's a fab little pedometer that syncs with MyFitnessPal and awards me more calories the more active I am. I eat back all of those calories. The more I want to eat, the further I have to walk, it's simple!
- I'm teaching my body to trust me again. My body went through a stage of not trusting me at all. Whenever I fed it, it said " I'm hanging on to every calorie I can, I don't know when the next famine is coming". My body doesn't cake about being skinny like I do, it just cares about keeping me alive. I'm feeding my body 6 small meals a day and not starving it any more. When my body asks for food by making me hungry, I feed it. Slowly but surely my body is beginning to realise that I'm not going to starve it any more, and in return, it's not punishing my with crazy weight fluctuations.
I'm still in the early stages of this new, "healthier" approach to maintenance, but so far, so good!
My 80ish pound weight loss has been my excessive pregnancy weight. It's been off for a while now, but I've struggled with the maintenance phase. I've been moving in circles of going over board on calorie binges (when feeling down in the dumps for example) then feeling I had to restrict my calories and diet again for a few days. After a few days f depriving myself, I'd end up on another binge ..... you get the picture.
I'd also become obsessed with weighing myself . I weigh myself every day (I know some people frown upon that, but it's a habit I've got myself into and something I'm reluctant to give up). Every time the scales showed me something I didn't want to see, I'd restrict my calories for a few days, then binge, etc etc........
I realised that this has to stop. Is not healthy and quite frankly it's doing my head in! Maintenance shouldn't be this hard.
So, I read around, and this is the conclusion I've come to........
- I still weigh myself every day but I enter my weight into this app
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/true-weight-lite/id304080586?mt=8 . It's called True Weight and uses a formula that I vaguely remember from school called moving / weighted averages. It basically smooths out weight fluctuations over the month, showing the trend. Basically it shows you if overall you are REALLY gaining, losing or maintaining your weight.
- I eat like the skinny me! In a nutshell, I've calculated the calories I should be eating at my "ideal" weight (112lbs for me, I'm 5'4") and that's my net goal every day. I exercise and eat back every calorie I've earned. If I fall off the food wagon & binge, gaining a few lbs, I've stopped the "dieting" the following day. If I keep eating to my goal calories, I will eventually be at my goal weight. It's the "Eat More To Weigh Less" principle and you can read more about it here http://www.myfitnesspal.com/forums/show/3834-eat-more-to-weigh-less - they explain it much better than I could.
- I wear my fitbit all day every day! It's a fab little pedometer that syncs with MyFitnessPal and awards me more calories the more active I am. I eat back all of those calories. The more I want to eat, the further I have to walk, it's simple!
- I'm teaching my body to trust me again. My body went through a stage of not trusting me at all. Whenever I fed it, it said " I'm hanging on to every calorie I can, I don't know when the next famine is coming". My body doesn't cake about being skinny like I do, it just cares about keeping me alive. I'm feeding my body 6 small meals a day and not starving it any more. When my body asks for food by making me hungry, I feed it. Slowly but surely my body is beginning to realise that I'm not going to starve it any more, and in return, it's not punishing my with crazy weight fluctuations.
I'm still in the early stages of this new, "healthier" approach to maintenance, but so far, so good!
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Replies
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What are your maintenance secrets?0
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Thanks for this! I'm still figuring it out. I will say that it's nice being able to eat back exercise calories and not worry about gaining weight. I'm 6'2", 205 pounds with about 15% body fat. My TDEE without exercise is about 2200 calories. I generally burn around 500 calorie at the gym. So I can eat 2700 calories, which is a lot of food.
The only strange thing I do is a free day. I had it while I was losing and really enjoyed it, so I've kept that. I estimate that I eat probably 1,500 calories over my TDEE on my free day (about 3700 calories). So I divide that 1,500 calories among the other 6 days (roughly 250 calories per day). So I try to keep my daily calories to about 2450 calories.
So far this is working... in fact my weight is creeping down a little (half a pound a week or so) so I may eventually bump up the calories a little.0 -
Any one else care to share their maintenance secrets?0
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I'm still learning (been maintaining for almost a year now), but two things I try to keep in mind are...
Water is my friend, and really helps out after high sodium days. I probably drink more water now (over 148 ounces every day) than I did when I was trying to lose weight.
Maintenance mode will have obvious weight fluctuations and to not worry about it unless the clothes aren't fitting well anymore.0 -
I've been maintaining since last October and I'm sure I'm won't be the first to say that it's been hard. I quit logging every day for a few months. It got to be too much worrying. I stressed if I ate too much...I stressed if I didn't eat enough. You get the picture.. I had given myself a 5 pound range that I wanted to stay in. So far that has worked. I only weigh myself once a week. Here lately I've been having slacker weeks. Yes, not days -weeks. Eating bad/not exercising. I wasn't reaching my "toning" goals and really starting to feel soft again. After my last weigh in the scale showed I was at the upper part of my range. This week I started logging again and really doing those toning exercises and picked up some more cardio. I'm sure I will have to readjust my eating habits once again. I guess I should thank my teenage daughter for making me try on bathing suits over the weekend. My goal when I started this last summer was that I could wear a bathing suit this summer with no skirt. I'm not there yet. I'm sure there is a lot out there that would be fine with it but I'm over critical. Best of luck, it sounds like you have a great plan.0
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I know it's frowned upon, but I really think weighing daily keeps me on track.
The other thing that helps me is continuing to use MFP daily.0 -
I know it's frowned upon, but I really think weighing daily keeps me on track.
The other thing that helps me is continuing to use MFP daily.
Couldn't agree more,0 -
I think it is frowned upon because for some because it causes unhealthy obsession over every little up and down.
I weighed multiple times daily for a while when I was trying to figure out how my weight fluctuated and what my range was. Right now I weigh maybe monthly since I've been on maintenance so long and know my TDEE well.0 -
I don't want to sound braggy, because I truly don't mean it this way, but I have found maintenance to be pretty easy. I have been maintaining a 30 lb. loss for a year and a half. I think the best thing I did was lose weight slowly, though it started out unintentional. At the end of my loss, I had MFP set at a 0.5 lb/week loss for 2 months. By the time I switched to maintenance I was adding a mere 250 calories a day...or a handful of nuts as a snack, to put it into perspective. I know I would have struggled if all of a sudden I had 600 extra calories to add to my day.
The second thing that helps me is monitoring my weight but not too closely, if that makes sense. I weigh about once every couple/few weeks. If the scale is creeping up or pants are getting tighter, I get very diligent about logging and staying under or at my maintenance calories for a week or so and everything balances back out again. Generally I don't get too worked up about the scale as long as my pants are fitting OK.
Lastly, if I have a high calorie meal (usually this would be a restaurant meal), it stops at that one meal, period. End of story. I don't do "cheat days" or any sort of binge or talk myself into the slippery slope of "I've ruined it, now I am just going to eat everything, boo-hoo."
For me, maintenance is really having my head in the right place and the right attitude. Everything else just seems to follow and fall in place. I wish the best of luck to all of you maintaining and hope you all find the groove that works for you!0 -
thanks for sharing I am still trying to figure it out but have been doing pretty good so far, If I know a special occassion is coming up then I eat 200 cals less for 3-5 days before hand so that I ca have some extra cals without worrying about itoo much. I continue to logg my food and exercise cals and use mfp for support, I also continue to weight once a week and drink my water........I guess maintanence isnt so much different then losing..LOL0
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For me, the hardest thing was to come to the terms of what maintenance really means. You can't be at the same weight every week, especially not as a woman, it fluctuates all the time. So I'm still trying to find what "my" weight is and how much to eat to not gain or lose too much.0
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I have finally settled at a weight (give or take a couple of pounds) that I and my body are happy with. I've continued logging my food daily while I've been figuring out what I can eat in order to maintain this weight.
Today I have decided it is time for me to start trusting myself - to believe that I have learnt over the past 8 months how much I can eat. So I am going to not log at weekends to see how I get on. If this works out then I shall reduce how much I log during the week until eventually I can just rely on a weekly weight check to see where I'm at.
I have to admit though, it does feel a little scary.0 -
I too tend to find maintenance mode fairly easy but I've only been at it since the first of this year. I still log my food and would be lost without doing so and I still go to the gym and workout 4 days a week and take Zumba 3 nights a week. I weigh in 2 times a week Monday nights for my TOPS chapter and the other is on Friday Morning for a group on Sparkpeople.com.0
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@jennitm -
Well, it's only been two weekends so far (one of which was a bank holiday so I also included the Monday) - but so far it's been fine :-) It actually felt very liberating to not log after being pretty meticulous about it for so long!
Give it a try - it isn't as scary as I thought it would be
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I'm glad to have found this group and this topic. I've been in maintenance only for 4 weeks, so I'm quite obsessed with every bite that goes into my mouth and every time I move. I log in at MFP every day and plan out my calories for most of the day so I see what's left for lunch or dinner if I'm going out with friends, which I do a lot at this time of year. Sometimes even both, which has been stressful! I'm hoping to get more on a roll where I understand exactly what I can eat and when so that I don't look over my own shoulder in anxiety all day long. I will continue weighing in once a week so that I can make sure I never start climbing back up the scale.
I think avoiding binges and trigger foods might even be relaxed with time - why can't I have a slice of pizza or a bagel every so often without it having to lead to anything?? - but not yet ...0 -
The secret to maintenance is this: "its a secret."
Yes, that is same joke about the secret to the New York Subway System.
Seriously, maintenance is just another plateau...but one not to be complained about.0 -
Eating more veg. Water only. Changed my friends habits to eat fruit for dessert0
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Thanks for the recommendation on that app, True Weight. I really like it!0
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You're welcome! I really like it too
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I really like the idea of not logging weekends. As I'm going into my second year of maintenance, I REALLY want to untether myself from daily food logging.
What's worked for me is daily weigh-ins, allowing a three pound fluctuation. I've only exceeded that threshold a couple of times since last summer and just watched what I ate and exercised more for a week or two until my weight was back in range. The way I see it, it's much easier to lose 2 pounds than 20 (or 40 or 60!)
Congrats, everyone, for getting to maintenance!0
