I have noticed that too. This summer I lost on vacation for a week...not something I would have expected. I think part of it is if I don't log I am more careful to make healthier choices since I can't see the numbers to tell if I am doing ok.

I do find that lately I seem to becoming a bit obsessive about logging (holiday baking and trying to log every taste) and I think it is because of this that I am always thinking about when I can eat next and if it will fit in my calories. My husband and I discussed it and we are both considering taking a break over the week from christmas to new years and just trying to maintain. Since my weight has dropped under 200 lbs I seem to have to work so much harder to burn a decent amount of calories in a work out. What used to take 30-40 minutes is taking 60. I realize this is because I am in better shape but I do miss getting awesome burns from lugging around a 100lb weight while exercising!

I find that if I don't log, I don't lose. I tend to eat whatever I want, fogetting that I already ate whatever I wanted earlier that day. I will probably have to log my whole life. I saw someone on MFP comparing it to having to balance your checkbook your whole life.

I am very much a creature of habit. If I have a toasted English muffin with hummus, I almost always eat exactly 2 oz. of hummus. No matter how it plays out - loading the bites or barely scraping it... It is odd. So I know if I eat that for breakfast almost exactly how many calories and such it is. And this is quite common. Or cheese and crackers. I get the same crackers, eat about 1.5 oz of cheese to 4-8 crackers, again, I know how many cals it is. So when I eat, I just try to keep the calorie ranges about the same 350-400 for breakfast, 150 for snack, 400-500 lunch, 150 pm snack, balance in dinner/after dinner treat if allowable... so when I stick to this, I do alright. If I toss in more somewhere, I make certain I write it down somewhere. My brain is strange in that if I write it down, I remember 98.5% of the time... So I just always try to keep an "idea" of where I aim for my meals. If I'm starving at anyone meal, I try to balance it with another meal by swapping estimated/allowed cals... Yes, I screw up, yes, sometimes I don't care, but the obsessive measuring of everything was ruining my health goals and my relationship, and my enjoyment of anything resembling free time, so I gave it up for a bit. I'll get back to it soon enough, but I cannot live measuring down to the microgram on everything for the rest of my life. So I've embraced the mantra - lose the way you will maintain. So if my goal is not to have to measure when maintaining, I have to lose not measuring, if that makes sense... But I am my own bundle of weird me, so I am NOT anyone else, and I would never suggest anyone who has a successful thing going to copy me, because it isn't foolproof, and it works for me, but I don't know any/many of people who share my own particular flavor of wacky, so it wouldn't translate directly... LOL

KAREN - great to see you again!! (HUGS)