150 lbs GONE!

karensuegill wrote: »

You look incredible! Aren't you thankful for MFP? I have been on my fitness journey for about 9 months now and have lost 40 pounds so far. I am about 13 pounds from my goal and your story is totally inspiring! Don't you find that when you've decided to get healthy and had success that you want to help others to do the same? I have some family members I would love to see get healthy, but it must be their choice. We can't do it for them. Thank you for sharing your story and best wishes to your future success. Keep paying it forward and it will motivate you to stay on track. I would love to be friends on MFP if you're interested.

I am always happy to share my story and journey with anyone who feels they might benefit from it -- I know how much it meant to my personal struggle to see from others that it's possible to achieve. But you're right -- it has to be the person's choice. A person has to be mentally and emotionally ready to make whatever change it is in question. I quickly learned to just stop talking if a person starts making excuses, etc. In my opinion, it just means that they aren't ready to do what they need to do, and that's ok, but it's not a decision I can make for them.

AShannon54 wrote: »

You totally rock! You are a great inspiration and I bet you feel fantastic.

Have you transitioned into maintaining instead of loss? I have about 15-20 more lbs to lose before I hit my long term goal (I have lost almost 120 lbs to date) and I am already worried/thinking/stressing about having to change my diet from 'loss' to 'maintenance'.

I have been working so hard and I have a daily routine for calories and it's a bit scary for me to start eating more. Overeating was the reason I gained all my weight in the first place. Any tips or suggestions on how to slowly move into 'maintenance mode'?

I've been doing it for a few weeks now, and I've got to say that it is FAR less stressful to me than weight loss mode was. I think that's because once I reached my goal (which was a somewhat arbitrary number), I stopped stressing over the scale and moved emphasis to how I look and feel. I still step on the scale each week, but it's more for a gut check than anything else, and I'm finding it stays pretty steady, maybe swinging a couple of pounds in either direction, but hovering at my goal. I've crept my calories up VERY slowly, so even after a month, most days, I only eat about 1400, although I go out to dinner with my husband once a week and now get what I actually want. I will keep inching up calories slowly as long as everything stays in check. And, of course, I still track everything faithfully in my food diary. That's how I'm managing the fear -- as long as I know what I'm consuming (and can point to the issue if the scale goes up), then I'm finding my fear subsiding as I show myself each day that I can actually eat and maintain control.