Is maintaining harder than weight loss?

It took a bit longer for my mind to catch up and my biggest hurdle was actually increasing my cal intake and not panic when my weight fluctuated.

Now it's not as stressful

<--3.7 years today graph. 10 pounds bump up that inches up and down. But would love to keep going up!
After a year of weight loss I got to my 50lbs off goal. A little low for my body, but just needed to touch the goal. Bumped up 3 lbs and was really good there. Got slack every vacation and inch up to 10lbs from my good weight. This 10 lbs wiggle room if kept unchecked would bounce all the way back to inactivity and eating poorly. If I didn't keep at it and keep trying.
So, at first, yeah it's easy! You finally get to eat more! You don't gain with that, either. Until you start making poor choices a little too often. Get lazy and complacent.
But, the good news is the physical fitness is much quicker to get back than it was, if you don't let yourself go very long. A couple of weeks of effort consistency and you are back in the saddle. And you have good habits already, you just have to rein it in.
Keep the good habits as life changing habits, not just weight loss time behavior. This stuff is forever. It's worth it. It feels good to feel good. Keep the old pictures and remember that you don't want to start from the beginning, and you can keep it.

Harder? No...but it takes more precision if you're not comfortable with a certain maintenance range.

I think the best approach is just to make periodic evaluations of how well you're maintaining and make adjustments accordingly. As long as you aren't convinced that you're going to maintain a specific number on the scale, it really isn't *that* difficult.

I've been maintaining for over three years now. Neither one is difficult for me, personally. My personality type has a ton of self control. I just plug in the numbers and it works. I was never technically overweight, but I had been noticing a gradual creeping up of my weight as I aged, so I decided to reverse the process here on MFP proactively, BEFORE I got to the point of being overweight. I think it's easier to be on maintenance only because I can eat more - I enjoy food. Otherwise, it's the same to me. :flowerforyou:

maintaining is only normally had for people who go on fad diets or lose control/go back into bad habits, thats why diets are bad idea but healthy eating/lifestyle works

I hope more people who have lost more than 10 pounds reply to this thread. Interesting that most replies are from members whose tickers show very low pounds-lost numbers... of course that could be just the amount the lost "this time" or with MFP.

I wonder if taking a year or two to lose weight because you have so much to lose, puts you in a different place than if you lose 10 pounds (or less) in a few months?

Another thought I had is that people who take control when they are overweight by just a few pounds compared to those who (like me) allow themselves to get morbidly obese before losing weight, are more nervous or shocked when they gain just a few pounds back, whereas someone who has lost 100 pounds might think "well I'm still 90 pounds lighter" if they gain back 10.

I lost more than 10 pounds...it took me about a year and I've been in maintenance for 15 months now...

BUT..

About 7 years ago, I lost 75 pounds...it took me about a year as well using diet, exercise, but not MFP. Within 2 years of reaching my 'goal,' I gained back all the weight, +10 more pounds.

During the process, I too felt that with all the hard work I put in to remove the weight, there was NO WAY I would ever gain it back...WRONG!

two lessons learned this time over last:

1) there's no END when it comes to diet & fitness...it's a lifelong quest that will need constant vigilance & tweaking as you age & situations change...ALWAYS...till you die.

2). If you don't address the REASONS why you use food as your drug of choice to alter your moods and keep swallowing your pain, your weight will be a lifelong struggle.

Not really..it is an adjustment of the calories....and exercise.

I like getting to eat more so no it is not harder.

Weight loss was actually the fun part, its only a temporary change, you eat defliect and you are rewarded with new lower numbers on the scale.

Maintancing is still at a deflect, its a life time commitment, your only reward is to see your weight not returning, so long term effect maintance can feel so a slow starvation, so yeah it is harder.

I rather plan to use MFP for the rest of my life, including for maintenance, and if later on I want to lose a few more. I don't feel like weight-loss is a summer classes type deal. Once you decide to do it, it's a sort of rest-of-your-life decision, and that's why programs and apps like MFP are nice to have because they remind you of how far you've come. I've signed off almost all of my favorite foods in large amounts and outside of special/desperate occasions (these include: Cherry Coke, Flaming Hot Cheetos, Little Debbie Oatmeal Pies, Cheese sticks/cubes, Burger King's grilled chicken ranch wraps) for life, and I think it's just a sacrifice you need to be willing to make if you want to lose weight and be healthy to a degree that makes you happy.

I can't see where maintenance should be more difficult. I'm by far no expert. But maybe if you thought that once you lost weight you could go back to eating anything you wanted and as much as you wanted, it will disappoint you to find out that you can't. But otherwise I find it extremely hard to believe it will be harder for me to stay under 1600 calories without exercise than to stay under 1200 calories without exercise.

The problem with your plan is MFP may or may not be around even six months from now. The way websites go, nothing is written in stone. Maintenance can be difficult because many tend to gain 4 or 5 lb when they go into maintenance likely because they don't reverse diet. That gain can trigger yo-yo dieting or at least trying to lose that gain again so the cycle repeats. If you reverse diet and continue to apply the good eating habits learned while losing the weight as well as continually improving your diet, then maintenance shouldn't be difficult at all.