Why does this seem scarier?

Actually, it's just as easy. You still follow the formula.

Up you calories to what MFP calculates for you. Log everything. Eat what you're hungry for within that limit. If you gain outside your maintenance range (I gave myself 5 pounds that I considered to be where my normal fluctuations would fall), lower your calories by 250 or so and see what happens. If you lose too much, up your calories a little.

Every day you get on that scale and you're in the 'success' zone you get to do the happy dance.

It took my a while to believe I was now thin - I started by just upping to half of my previous deficit. But I did (it's been 4 years). Biggest problem: My body responds to both calories and unrefined carbs. My natural inclination when I upped my calories was to add back in more cookies, bread, etc. For me, that was a mistake, because I bloat. So I balance my extra calories and include more protein and fat, as well as carbs. (Ice cream does this beautifully.) One I found my feet, I've had no problems.

BTW, I just learned to listen to my body. A little treat is great. More isn't better. Overeating makes me feel gross. I eat what I'm hungry for and leave the rest on the table. If I'm hungry, I eat more. I always I hit my weekly goals.

Congratulations!

I am having the same thought process, I am 7lbs away from my goal, have lost 23lbs so far, so I have done really good. I am really nervous about the maintenance process, I read in another thread to gradually start adding calories, so this past week I added 100 to my daily intake, today I have gained back 1.5lbs, which could be water weight I will give it a couple of days hopefully it is just me being nervous. So today I am going back down to my low calorie count 1.5lbs per week til I meet my goal. Then I will work on the maintenance process, don't want to get ahead of myself.

One question I have is, do the people around you tell you, you are too thin. ( my mother-in-law in particular, I think she just wants me to start eating everything she bakes again) She keeps calling my journey a diet, I am no longer calling it a diet, it is a lifestyle change for the better of me. I am 45, 5'7 157, with a goal to be 150. With my body type I can appear to look thin, but the scale and BMI says I am border line overweight.

bkstein40 wrote: »

I am having the same thought process, I am 7lbs away from my goal, have lost 23lbs so far, so I have done really good. I am really nervous about the maintenance process, I read in another thread to gradually start adding calories, so this past week I added 100 to my daily intake, today I have gained back 1.5lbs, which could be water weight I will give it a couple of days hopefully it is just me being nervous. So today I am going back down to my low calorie count 1.5lbs per week til I meet my goal. Then I will work on the maintenance process, don't want to get ahead of myself.

One question I have is, do the people around you tell you, you are too thin. ( my mother-in-law in particular, I think she just wants me to start eating everything she bakes again) She keeps calling my journey a diet, I am no longer calling it a diet, it is a lifestyle change for the better of me. I am 45, 5'7 157, with a goal to be 150. With my body type I can appear to look thin, but the scale and BMI says I am border line overweight.

Sounds like me, 50 5'6 at the top of my BMI, my size 8 start to feel big. Before I hit midpoint I'm in a size 4. I would look horrible at the low end of BMI. To be honest I am happy to be anywhere between top of BMI and midpoint, because my blood work is great and insurance/work wellness programs back off.

In terms of your mother in law, tell her to back off I trust my doctors recommendation over yours. There are certain people you have to discount or it will drive you nuts.

Yep, it's a pretty common mental block when moving to maintenance. Even worse when you move onto a bulk. It took me about 2 months to be comfortable with it. I went up 100 a week until maintenance and after about 4-6 weeks, I saw that the scale and my measurements were holding steady and it became easier.

Same here.
Its a mind set thing for me.

Now i made myself a deal/promise when i started to lose weight. And i kept it.
So i started over a few weeks back ( i maintained before for 20 years till i got injured and gained a lot so i know what it is to maintain).

So i made a deal again an agreement with myself

1. Keep weighing myself every morning and eat 1500 calories 6 weeks and see what happens.
2. tweak up or down after 6 weeks and up to 1600 when i am still losing or stay the same.
3. 4 weeks
4. still happy up again. and repeat. Only stop it and tweak down when the gain is really a gain and not a fluctuation.
5. end result weigh ones a week.

Now by doing it this way i hope for me that my mind get used to the more eating which i do at the moment.
I eat the same i ate before, only more
wooohoo instead of half an avocado i eat a whole lol and one serving of ice cream is now 2 when i have the room for it.
So i eat more dense foods. The skinny products ( light) are slowly getting replaced for the full versions etc.
But my eating habits stay the same.

But i know exactly what you mean. I also still count very accurate and slowly let go of the accuracy and mindset of losing.
I even had 2 days ago a big serving of ice just because i had calories left and exercised a bit more that day.
I was not hungry but i just said hit that level!

So that is my strategy for now...if it works? well i sure hope so lol.

OP this is something that I struggled with as well. I lost the weight I needed to lose, about 25 lbs in a year. I gained a little back due to complacency, buckled down again, lost it back and then went a few pounds past my original goal weight, so I thought, "hey, maybe I need a lower goal weight, let's keep going!". Problem was, I stalled out, and really didn't want to keep restricting or stressing about the numbers. So I ended up in a comfortable four pound range, with my original goal weight being the top end of the range, and I stayed there for several months but was still set to "lose" in MFP.

For me, the hardest part was just declaring myself in maintenance and officially pulling the trigger to make the necessary system changes (I use a FitBit synched with MFP) to let the systems know that I'm done trying to lose, rather than just looking like I'm in the longest plateau ever...

Here's what I did recently (also note, I use MFP Net Calorie method and eat back the FitBit exercise adjustments)

• I changed my weight on MFP (increased it about 2 lbs to the mid-point of my range, not the low end of my range which was totally a vanity thing since I really wanted my ticker to show an even 30 lbs lost but who cares, tickers don't go on anything anyway).
• Changed my goal to "maintain my weight" in both MFP and FitBit
• Increased my NET Calorie Goal to 1750 (still a little below what MFP thinks is my non exercise maintenance (1890) but I like to have a bit of a buffer.

Here's what I've noticed...

• Although I didn't increase my calorie goal much at all, I am a little more paranoid about staying under it, closing out with 100-200 or even more left at the end of each day (until the weekend at which time I have been really making up for it!). I think when I was set at a definite deficit, I knew there was a buffer built in there, and always was fine with eating right up to that or even going over since I knew that I had room before exceeding my maintenance.
• My exercise adjustments from FitBit are much bigger now. I don't know if it is partly because I increased my weight so it thinks I have a higher baseline, or because FitBit was adjusting me for a loss, but I don't feel like I've increased my exercise TOO much (maybe more steps in the FitBit challenges) and I'm getting adjustments of 400+ cals instead of the 200 or so I was getting before. That's also leading to me not totally trusting this yet.
• I've actually shifted down to the lower end of my maintenance range. No real shock there, since like I said above, I'm manually keeping myself in a bit of a deficit, but it is kind of nice to call myself "in maintenance" and have lost a couple of pounds from where I was hovering in the spring/summer.

So yeah, I can relate to your post, but I think as others have said, the nice thing is, now all of us know how to be successful, and we are committed to maintaining our success, so the main thing is to just relax a little (not too much) and keep an eye on things so that you can make corrections before things totally go off the rails.

Yep. Maintenance can be very scary. Especially if you maintain a dieting mentality (I'l lose the weight and then I'll be done), And the statistics don't support maintenance success.

So, if you are commited to staying at maintenance, it really means changing the way you live. Period.

Maintaining for seven months now. Seems easier to me than losing because I have learned a new lifestyle and way of eating/portions. I eat a little more these days but rarely. I know when I am full now and when to stop eating. Such a huge difference in how I used to feel/ look. Mind boggling. Have dropped 48 lbs.

This is a helpful and timely thread for me: Thank you all.

I'm getting close to GW (6-12 pounds, probably - I'm looking at it as adjustable based on how I feel/look), trying to increase calories gradually to coast into it, and finding that process a little scary. I didn't (and don't) feel like I generally have a seriously disordered relationship with food, not a binge-er or much of an emotional eater, just someone who likes food & has tended to eat too much of it (with a little bit of boredom eating or habitual snacking in there).

It has really surprised me to find how discombobulated I am about finding my maintenance level! It's really comforting to know this is normal, and to hear some of your strategies.

Again, thanks!

If you've gotten into the habit of tracking calories daily, there's nothing to worry about. You have the tools you need to maintain your weight forever, it's like riding a bike. All you need to do is keep your willpower up, and you'll be golden.

What you're experiencing is normal, I went through that as well when I transitioned over to maintenance, and then went through it twice as bad when starting a bulk. Eventually you realize that gaining weight while exercising is completely different than before when you did nothing.

I'm not 'maintaining'. I'm keeping a small deficit (talking 3000 calories a month or something) to lose 3 more pounds.

That seems to work for me, I've been maintaining for more than a year... I lose vacation weight relatively easily that way and don't freak out too much if I have a couple days over etc. I don't know if I'll ever lose those pounds, but that's ok.

freesiasun5 wrote: »

I am downright terrified to declare myself in maintenance.

Losing weight seemed so easy. I knew the formula. I knew staying under goal had positive consequences and going over had negative consequences. It was an absolute I could easily deal with.

Maintenance seems so foreign to me. The majority of my life has been spent either gaining weight or losing weight.

Now my brain has constant battles that go like this:

"You should TOTALLY have taco bell tonight! You've lost 55 pounds. You deserve it!"

"That's how you got into this mess in the first place, dummy. Best go have a Lean Cuisine and stay 300 calories under."

How long does it take to get into the rhythm of maintaining, accept it as a new normal, and not feel like everything you put in your mouth will get you right back where you started?

I so understand and I am right there with you. I have been in maintenance mode almost a month. I am thankful I have my trainer who also helps with my nutrition to keep me from totally freaking out. We are slowly increasing calories to find where I need to be to maintain. This week has been tough as I see all I am eating in my diary and think that is way too much. I am going to gain weight. But I trust my trainer and I know he won't let me fail. I also reach out to my accountability friends when I start freaking out or my old stinkin thinkin come back. I just need to trust the process and my hard work and keep doing the same things I just get to eat more.

I LOVE MAINTENANCE!! I couldn't wait to get here and 2 yrs ago I finally did....and yes there have been a few ups and ups on the scale but I never thought anything was scary about this process, whats not to love about having extra calories to enjoy . Its just a matter of still keeping an eye on how much we're eating and still moving like we did when we were losing.

I have a +/- 5lb goal range, I adjust my calories if I swing up..I've never had the issue of going below my goal range ( I enjoy my food too much!)
I weigh in several times a week as I like to monitor fluctuations, I know what makes me retain water/gain by now and it doesn't phase me any more. Knowledge is power

freeoscar wrote: »

What's been difficult for me (Month 5 of maintenance now) is mentally dealing with the fluctuations within normal. I guess because when I was losing I ate similar types of foods all the time so I lost at a fairly steady clip - no real plateaus or gains. Now I'll gain or lose a few pounds at a time (I weigh weekly) with seemingly no correlation to CICO for that week. And of course when I gain I get nervous and think OMG 4 lbs - that'll take 6-8 weeks of eating at a deficit to lose. I just stick to my plan and so far CICO eventually evens things out, but mentally it sucks.

I agree with this. I think I'm hyper aware of any fluctuation in my body, simply because I DON'T WANT TO GAIN WEIGHT. I'm three months in, and I'm starting to get a little less paranoid. I have been logging this week, to make sure I'm keeping on track, but I didn't log at all the previous months.

freesiasun5 wrote: »

I am downright terrified to declare myself in maintenance.

Losing weight seemed so easy. I knew the formula. I knew staying under goal had positive consequences and going over had negative consequences. It was an absolute I could easily deal with.

Maintenance seems so foreign to me. The majority of my life has been spent either gaining weight or losing weight.

Now my brain has constant battles that go like this:

"You should TOTALLY have taco bell tonight! You've lost 55 pounds. You deserve it!"

"That's how you got into this mess in the first place, dummy. Best go have a Lean Cuisine and stay 300 calories under."

How long does it take to get into the rhythm of maintaining, accept it as a new normal, and not feel like everything you put in your mouth will get you right back where you started?

It's still a formula...the difference between losing and maintaining is a handful of calories...that's it. It is illogical to think that you will gain weight if you are hitting your calorie targets...which BTW, did you set to maintain? You mentioned staying under...you didn't need to stay under your target while losing and most certainly don't need to stay under while maintaining.

It's still the exact same formula...if you knew your formula before, you should be able to do the math and add in the calories that you would need to maintain given whatever average rate of loss you were experiencing.

It's all still just math.