How was your adjustment into maintenance?

I fell into maintenance as I never reached my original goal. I just stopped losing. I have been in maintenance 2 years. The last year has been tougher as I have gained a few pounds and am now restricting even more to try to get a handle on it. It seems to me that maintenance has it's own challenges because you no longer get the reactions from others about how great you look now etc. So you must find something else to shoot for. I think for all of us that may be a different thing. I'm still trying to figure out what mine is, lol.

It took me almost 18 months to lose 50 lbs so I had plenty of time to change my eating habits & thinking so it was easy, I just ate a little more of what I normally ate however I gained 10 lbs when I quit smoking by eating snacks in the evening, I finally got a handle on it & lost 2 lbs so far

It took me 2.5 yrs to lose almost 150. The last few months I was losing so slowly that I just stopped losing. I was about 5 lbs above my original goal, and was fine with that. I’ve regained about 20 lbs the last 3 years, mostly vacation lbs that don’t come off. So I can eat at maintenance pretty well most of the time but have had a hard time cutting back enough to lose the little extras. I’ve also increased my activity level a lot, now biking 1,000 mi this year and longer distances swimming. It’s been a challenge to fuel my activity enough but not too much. I’ve also gotten a little too “flexible” with eating treats!
This is of concern to me because I gained all that excess weight very slowly, 5-10 lbs a year for 25 years. Obviously I don’t want to go there again.
I’ve decided to start logging again and refocus on losing that extra 10 lbs by my 65th birthday next spring.

I have respect for people that have chosen a maintenance number and get there and stay there, but it wasn't that way for me. The lines are a lot blurrier.

I have declared myself to be "in maintenance" several times over the last five years. The first time I had moved from an overweight BMI to the top end of normal BMI. I was tired of living life in a calorie deficit, and I liked how I looked. I was within the range of normal, so...done.

I've had ups and downs in between (I was a stress binger), but at a certain point I moved to the middle of normal BMI and declared that to be my new maintenance number.

I haven't binged for a year or two (thankfully), but I had about 6 months of stress/no time/illness starting in November of last year and I eventually regained some weight. I'm back to my maintenance range but now I'm looking to address this visceral fat I still have, regardless of what the scales say. (I'm a quintessential apple).

Am I in maintenance right now? Kinda sorta. Blurry lines.