Why does this seem scarier?

cwolfman13 wrote: »

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.

I am set to maintain, but I tend to have a higher calorie day on the weekends, so I save up for that by staying under target a bit during the week.

I'm working on trusting my Fitbit. I'm working on getting the "you're short and small, so you can't possibly be burning that many calories" out of my head. "Be active and you can eat more" is my current mantra.

I also set up an account on trendweight.com and turned off the automatic wall posts for weight loss, so that I won't be posting that I lost .2 pounds every other day when I fluctuate and use my Aria. I had been avoiding using it, since I gained 2 pounds when I went into maintenance. I do miss seeing the nice round 55 pounds lost, but I want to see the trends so I can put the fluctuations into perspective.

Looking back, I've been effectively maintaining for 2 months. I just need to keep on keeping on.