Simple question: how do I maintain my weight?

I have never gotten there so I don't personally have any experience with maintaining but I saw an episode of HBO's weight of the nation (it's on youtube) that talks about the reason so many gain the weight back. At first glance it sounds like depressing news but I found it encouraging because at least now I know and can be prepared to combat this phenomenon. I don't know if i have this exactly right but it makes sense to me. There is something in your brain called leptin. When you are at your highest weight you have a lot of it and your brain is happy because it doesn't understand that the fat is making you unhealthy. As you lose weight, the leptin levels go down and your body will fight you to bring the levels back up. So say for example you are at ideal weight and for someone who looks exactly like you but has never been heavier, she needs 2000 calories a day to maintain. You could do the identical food exercise etc and gain weight. you would need to do 10% more exercise (like burn 200 more calories) and eat 10% less (1800 instead of 2000) This made me feel better because it reinforced in my mind I'm not on a diet, this is for life, and also there is no way in hell I'm gaining any more weight to make this worse than it already is lol. I know some forums don't like you posting links to other websites and such so if you want the link to that episode pm me and I will send it to you. They did a study where they gave a lady who was maintaining leptin and she did a lot better reported less cravings hunger etc. With my luck by the time it is on the market it will either be too insanely expensive or we will find later it causes cancer or some other crap lol. I sincerely wish you the best of luck maintaining your new body for life!

Don't eat too much.

You just have to keep doing what you did to lose weight but throttle back a bit. This is the reason why failure is so rampant for "diets" and prepared mail order meals. If you stop, you gain. When I came to MFP I changed the type of foods I eat and the amount. I also increased exercise too. Now in maintenance, all I have to do is adjust AND keep doing what got me to this point. Although it feels odd at first, not looking for the scale to go down, it isn't all that much different. Or another way to look at it "a few hundred calories". Coming from weight watchers you may need to take a few weeks or more to settle in here before really changing a lot of things all at once.

Pretty much this. Just don't lose sight of it. The journey never ends.

Not trying to be a dink but weight watchers isn't a rampant diet and you don't order meals. You can actually eat whatever you want but instead of calories, they use "points". Same thing.

I just didn't want to pay for it anymore. I can count calories instead of "points"

Lots of my friends have used Weight Watchers and been successful. I like MFP and have found it very helpful. However, if you don't want to pay but like Weight Watchers, just continue to use their point system and see what they say for maintenance. I know you can do it online (my brother likes their site), but other friends of mine just do it on paper.

In my personal experience, the MFP calculator was pretty off and suggested way too little calories for me, and I like to customize my macros more. I use the calculator at iifym.com to get my calorie and macro counts and plug them into the custom settings on MFP, and make sure I am hitting my macros every day and I have been able to maintain the same weight (give or take a pound or two) for a couple years.