Struggling

Peanut butter and full fat milk are a good place to start.

You can't just eat more on top of what you're already eating, if you're already full. You have to change how you're eating, and to do that, you have to change how you're thinking. It isn't easy. But at least it's simple: A balanced diet is enough of everything you need, but not too much of anything over time. Your diet isn't balanced if you're not getting in enough calories. No foods are healthy or unhealthy in themselves, it's all about context, amounts and frequency. You can undereat for a while, but hunger will catch up with you eventually, and brutally.

PeterAllan3450 wrote: »

You are right I’m looking at this all the wrong way. I’m so used to following a plan where I loose weight. I just don’t know what to change. I’m just don’t want to sabotage what I have achieved and don’t want to become unhealthy all at the same time. I just find it all to confusing

PeterAllan3450 wrote: »

Yeah your right. It just confuses me getting the right balance.

Many people can lose weight quite easily, but can't handle the transition to maintenance. A small minority just can't stop, and go into eating disorders, but most people just go back to old habits. Maintenance is both easier and harder than losing weight. You get to eat more food - yay! - but you can't go back to how you used to eat/move. When losing weight, you are motivated by a steady decreasing number on the scale. In maintenance, you have to keep doing what you're doing, with just a little more leeway, and forever, without any reward in the form of weightloss. So you have to find a new normal. You will have room for indulgences, but no consistent overindulgence. You have to look at food in a differerent way, neither comfort nor enemy; food just is, but food is good. Food should nourish you AND give you pleasure. But you shouldn't eat instead of dealing with stress and negative emotions. The amazing thing about getting a better relationship with food, is that it's a learning process, that you can hone, but never perfect, it's full of surprises and possibilities, exciting at times and annoying at other times. It can also help you in other parts of your life, with structure, boundaries, confidence, self-love.

PeterAllan3450 wrote: »

You pretty much said it in a nut shell how I feel loosing weight is easy and my head is so set in that way. I just wish it was a simple formula to maintain.

There is a simple formula to maintain - calories in have to be the same as calories out, over time. But that is just the technical part. To make this work in practice, you have to be willing to make an effort. Not a struggle, like in deprivation or denying yourself, but patience, kindness and discipline. It actually takes discipline to eat enough, too, not just to not eat too much. Effective maintenance is in many ways going to be easy, because it's gentler than you expected, but in other ways it's going to be hard, because it's totally different from what you expected.