Maintaining, sort of...wish this was easier.

Unless I am crazy, OP lost 55 or so pounds from when she joined, according to her profile, in July 2013, and November (she doesn't put year, but assumed 2013), so 55 pounds in 4 months. I guess it's possible, but that seems like a huge amount to me. I've lost 12 pounds (and I realize everybody is different) since 05/18, and I am sure much of that was just water, so I expect my losses to drop off some over the next few months and probably won't come near losing 55 pounds in 4 months.

I hope, OP, you are being safe in your weight loss/maintaining plans. I think you look fantastic though and you should just enjoy life now that you are thinner.

I know its hard to stop thinking of it. I think of losing 24/7, and constantly about what food I am going to eat, calories int his or that, it is driving me batty, honestly and I am only a month into it. Not so much with cravings, but just constantly thinking about calories. I don’t feel that is a healthy way to live for ME. I wake up, weigh myself. eat, weigh myself, pee/poop, yup weigh myself. Shower, yup, weigh myself like a shower will somehow magically melt off pounds. It is becoming just all too crazy for me.

Before I ate 2 (what I considered small) baked potatoes, not weighed, sorry, but it took me probably half an hour to find an entry I liked in the database to add it. They all are so different from one another. I couldn't decide if they were small or medium potatoes, so just went with the larger so I don’t underestimate my calories. This to me is just nutso. I have 2 jobs, 3 kids I have to feed, house to care for, etc. a boatload of animals, and I know you all do too of varying degrees, but it all seems just a bit obsessive to me. I think it hurts my weight loss too in some aspects.

Just be careful, and try to love yourself.

You are right in thinking you might need psychological help. I'm going to be awfully blunt, it sounds like you could have an eating disorder. Or - at the very least - disordered eating behavior. At your height, 107 sounds awfully tiny. When I was under what seems to be my body's natural weight, I was hungry all the time, too. Even now, I think about food a lot. To the point of obsession. The more nourished I make myself, the less I think about food. But at one point, it was literally all I could think about. Down to planning my meals hours in advance. Drooling over them before I even made them. I'd finish breakfast, and plan dinner! I went through this during both my binge eating/compulsive eating days and during recovery from restriction. I won't ask how you got to 107, as that might be something you don't want to talk about, or perhaps you did it the relatively healthy way of 1200 calories and exercise, maybe you even did it on 1600 calories and exercise. I don't know. But I will say that if you restricted too heavily (less than 1200) or if you did 1200, this reaction your body is having is not abnormal, and it could ease in due time if you gain a few pounds back.

Something that has helped me is exactly what another poster suggested. Throwing out the scale. I even removed my current weight from MFP. The weight listed is the weight I was back in February. I had updated it, but deleted it. When I get around scales, that's what triggers my obsession with restriction, which triggers my (far more than) healthy appetite. See, I have battled EDNOS. (Which is OEFEDor something like that now) It is common for those of us who do to go through periods of binge eating, restriction, over exercising, etc Another thing that has helped has been browsing the MFP forums. Seeing that it's normal to be 125, 145, 135 lbs etc. As for someone our height, those weights are preferable.

Just wanted to second the posters who said your goal weight range sounds low. I'm 5'4" and my goal range is 125-130. That's a healthy, athletic body for me. And clothes shopping is fun at that weight. If I go lower (I did a few years ago) friends start asking me if I've been sick. Definitely not the impression I want to create!

I know every body is different, and you put a high value on being a size zero, so my goal range will probably never work for you. Just saying maybe a little higher weight than 105-110 would be better for your height. And if that idea causes you a lot of anxiety, talking to a counselor really does sound like something worth doing.

Same here. At 5'3", I'm happy around 125 plus or minus a few pounds. I've gained 8 lbs over the last few weeks and I look better than I ever have.

opps, I meant 2 months.

After a binge I usually give it one week before I step on the scales again. This is because I don't want to see a big gain and then go into craizy restriction mode. I am also maintaining an underweight size for the same reasons: small frame + I like how it looks on me. I stopped at this weight because I was afraid to go lower. Health is more important than looks. I know how hard it is to maintain a low weight, you have to always keep an eye on the scales; It is not a very happy way of living.
Those weight ranges are more of a guideline based on statistics. If you go a few pounds over or under the healthy zone you don't suddenly have an ED or develop heart disease.

I like you, you understand. :flowerforyou: You know how hard it is to maintain a low weight. It's not b/c we want to be able to say we weigh a certain amount, but b/c we look good at or around a certain weight. And having a small frame makes it even harder to feel good about your body b/c any little weight shows. :sad: I started weighing myself only once a week now cause the weight fluctuations were driving me insane!!

You like this response because it validates your way of thinking. It's true that the recommended weights are guidelines based on statistics, but you want to weigh between 20 and 30 pounds below the recommended weight. That's not "a few pounds over or under" that weight. Statistically speaking, that's outside the standard deviation from the mean. Please, really and truly: seek counseling. What you are proposing for your body is unhealthy.

Yeah, honestly... I can't tell you how many times I've seen people using "but I have a really small frame" to justify under-eating or being under-weight.

If the only issue was that you truly had a smaller than average frame and were 100% healthy at the weight you're at, then you wouldn't be struggling so much to maintain. You wouldn't be stressing out so much. You wouldn't be obsessed with food and weight (thinking about it 24/7). You wouldn't be so afraid of your appetite. You wouldn't be freaking out and over-restricting every time you over-indulge or every time you feel bloated. You wouldn't be binge eating. You wouldn't be eating 1200 calories a day. You woldn't restrict yourself to "safe" foods. You wouldn't be exercising twice a day in desperate attempts to get rid of water weight. You wouldn't look at your (underweight) body and only see fat. You wouldn't be lying to your doctor about how much you weigh and wearing certain clothes to the doctor's office to make your weight appear to be healthy when it's not.

^All of that is information taken from what you've written on MFP. I have no idea what's actually going on in your head. Chances are pretty good that you're playing things down a bit here. This is not just about bmi, this is about your thoughts, feelings and behaviours. It's not about small frames and short torsos and being so teeny tiny that the rest of the world's standard's don't apply to you. I'm not trying to be flippant - people do have different frames, and some people can be perfectly healthy (physically and mentally) at the lower end of the healthy bmi range, and can easily maintain that weight. Everything you have written indicates that this is not the case for you. Please take a moment to re-read what you've written, to really look at how you're thinking and behaving, especially the parts no one else knows about. What you're doing is not healthy. And it's not going to get any easier until you accept that and get some proper help.