Yes, it's pretty common for it to be a challenge to shift your thinking from losing to maintaining. You don't have a drop in scale weight to look forward to anymore. I, and quite a few other people, found it useful to have other goals to works towards once they reached their goal weight. I started working on gaining strength and I've starting doing runs and have some pace goals for 2013.

You're not alone. The sad fact is that most people who lose a lot of weight don't manage to keep it off. For me, maintenance is much harder than the weight loss phase. You don't have the motivation of seeing the scale go down, feeling/seeing your body change, having clothes fit differently, having people make comments... all of that stuff is very encouraging. You constantly have new goals to aim towards - the next milestone on the scale, or the next dress size. I found it also didn't matter if I wasn't completely happy with how I looked, because I was always making progress and I'd think "I look better than I did a few months ago, imagine how great I'm going to look if I lose another 10lbs!" There's a constant momentum with losing weight.

Then maintenance - well, you're just staying the same. You lose the majority of your little goals that you were aiming for. People stop commenting and get used to you at the size you are. People see weight loss as a big achievement, but don't tend to see maintenance in the same way. Watching what you eat all the time is boring. When you're losing, you always have the motivation of seeing the next pound down, and that's the "reward" for eating right and exercising. When you're maintaining, the reward is just... staying the same.

There is also the issue of complacency. A lot of people think they need to do x, y and z to get the weight off, and then go back to "normal". I don't think you can look at it like that. For most people, it's a life-long thing, and the weight loss part is just the first phase. I still struggle with this, and it just feels unfair that I have to keep being vigilant about what I eat. I think when you accept that that's just how it is though, it gets easier. For me, weighing/tracking my food intake and exercising are just things that I need to do - along with showering, brushing my teeth, going to work etc. I think you have to have a slight identity shift to - to stop seeing yourself as someone who is overweight, to stop seeing that as an option really. You're someone who is a healthy weight now.

I agree with the others about making new goals, so that you can keep that momentum going. As far as weight goes, I am challenging myself to stay within a certain weight range. Not as fun as losing weight, but it's something to focus on. You have to start looking at "success" in a different light. I'm really proud that I can say I've maintained my weight loss for 7 months, and I will be even more so when I can say it's been a year. Like I said, not many people manage to maintain their weight loss. That's a scary thought, but don't let it depress you - see it as a new challenge!

Also, I'm working on increasing the distance of my runs, and getting faster, and I plan to enter a 10k race sometime this year, and I'd love to do a half marathon. I'm also working on increasing the amount of weight I can lift. I keep records, so they are actually tangible goals.

I'll be honest, starting to maintain my weight really messed with my head a little, and I found it really hard at first. It does get easier though. Take things slowly (increasing calories/introducing new foods), keep an eye on your weight, keep logging (at least for now) and try to identify why you struggled to keep it off previously.

It may be helpful to view maintenance not as the end of a process but as the beginning of one. You're not a dieter; you are now living a new lifestyle.

I've been in maintenance for a few months, and it's been pretty lame because I lost motivation to keep running, which had been my mode of exercise for weight loss. But it's only been in this phase that I realized that even though I've met my weight goal, my strength is nowhere near where it could be, and that adding muscle will only make maintaining this weight easier. There are so many dimensions of fitness and therefore so many new goals to pursue.

I definitely share the anxiety - if the scale isn't going down, it feels like it's only a matter of time till it starts going UP! I have been on maintenance since late April. I log my food and exercise every day and weigh every week, just to keep an eye on things. I'm still focused pretty much to the point of obsession but hope that this will eventually fade away as I get used to eating "normally" again without losing control.

My problem is that I see the daily calorie intake as a maximum and tweak what I am eating each day so as to come in under it, sometimes by 200 calories. I also don't eat back my exercise calories. So I have continued losing weight during maintenance instead of stabilizing (although much more slowly) and have gotten down to 99 now when I should really be about 105. It's scary - it's too low - but adding calories and letting the scale go upward is very threatening to me. So I hear you loud and clear!

I think we're initially obsessed - we've worked so hard to get where we are, we know it's a new lifestyle for the rest of our lives, we want SOME parameters so we aren't just eating mindlessly and packing on too many calories. I believe that eventually we will each reach a kind of balance in what we eat on a daily basis and be more aware when we go out, and the obsession will fade.