Maintaining vs. Losing Which is harder?

Definitely maintaining for me! I find my mentality changed - when I was losing, I would never be in "the red". I was more motivated to see results. Now, I'm sometimes in the red and don't care as much... which can turn into a problem real fast

I do exercise everyday which technically gives me more calories to eat... thank goodness for that! haha

I lost 52 pounds. It wasn't difficult, really, just long. Now that I am maintaining, I worry less. If I go over and gain a little, I'll just cut back for a few days and add an extra exercise day and that's it! Not like when I started and had loads of weight to lose. I'm still eating the healthy foods that helped me lose, just a bit more of them and once in a while, if I splurge, I don't panic. I am more aware of what I eat and what my body needs. that helps out in restaurants. When I was trying to lose and would eat something way off track, often I would get discouraged and ruin the whole day. Now, I take it in stride, knowing that one thing, no matter how fat or full of calories it is, It won't destroy all my hard work.

I was a maniac for a while, exercising six days a week. When I reached my goal, my fear was not being able to keep up with exercising. I thought once I stopped exercising often, I would gain everything back super fast. I was able to handle 3 days a week for sure and if I could more, great! That seems to be enough. I'm working towards firming up and getting my body fat % down, so the focus is not in the same place.

All this to say that losing was harder and while maintaining is tough, it's way more fun.

definitely maintaining is harder.......when you have a specific calorie count, you are very goal oriented. Once you reach that goal, you need to find the new calorie count that will keep you on track. You cannot go back to old habits.....you are not invincible to gaining weight....you must continue to excercise and be responsible for your intake vs. burn rate. I have been there before and hope I have learned my lesson. good luck

This for me too
I've had to fiddle with my maintanance calories to find the right balance, my MFP maintanance calories were too low

Good luck to you

I found neither to be all that difficult but if I would have to pick one I'd say losing because a few extra calories is a few extra calories and I enjoy eating.

I think people tend to find maintenance difficult because they haven't actually established a new "normal" in RE to their diet (noun). They also tend to think of exercise as something you do to lose weight so they fail to actually establish independent fitness goals...when they reach their goal weight they see little point in exercising anymore.

In reality, regular exercise is just as important if not more important in maintenance than it is when you are losing weight. You also can't go back to old habits...people talk a good talk about lifestyle change, but most fail to actually implement such a change and go back to the SAD or whatever it was they were doing before.

The only difference between losing and maintaining is a few hundred calories...basically an extra snack or two...but people tend to miss this boat entirely.

Losing weight is easy, keeping it off is the hard part.

To lose weight, you only need to be vigilant about your calories in vs calories out in the short term. To maintain, you have to be vigilant indefinitely.

I've lost about 50lbs 3 times now (twice after pregnancies). For me, losing is the hardest. When I was at my goal weight (I'm about 10 over now), as long as I stayed active doing the things I love and was reasonable about food, the weight stayed off and I even kept losing. I also find that I'm much more active when I weigh less (more energy) so that makes it easier to keep it off.