Long time maintainers how do you do it

As a lifelong yo yo er of say 20-30 pounds I have been maintaining now for about 2 and a half years. I was thinking about what is different "this" time as about the 3 year mark is probably where the curve has always started to climb again in the past. I "think" what is different is that we have so many MANY more tools available to us these days than we did say in the 70's, 80's, and 90's. There is of course this website MFP, but the fitness trackers are so much MORE improved and the information out there on food composition is so much more available to us. Id like to think that all of those tools will help me make this the last yo.....

amarquis792 wrote: »

Hi all- new here to the whole maintenance thing and I am really struggling and worried because i definitely feel like i keep losing although i really am not trying to. I have been scared to increase my calories so i am doing it very very slowly.

I am still doing mainly cardio where right now the gym's are not open- but I am starting to notice when I look in the mirror I am seeing more bones and it scares me. How do I stop my body from losing fat and muscle?

Also- it might be a silly question but when people work on maintaining, how rigid are you with tracking little things like condiments that you might eat with foods, ie: ketchup, dipping sauces, etc. Do you incorporate these and still track these in your MFP diaries once you are trying to work on maintaining? Any advice and support would be appreciated! Struggling hard core over here

@amarquis792

To struggle at first is quite common.
You need to keep weighing yourself (preferably monitoring your trend and ignoring normal fluctuations) then you know if you are losing, don't rely on feelings. There are too many feelings in your post TBH and this would be an easy feeling to replace with cold hard data.

"How do I stop my body from losing fat and muscle?" - eat more, it's as simple as that (simple and easy are not the same thing of course).

People maintain with all different levels of rigidity and accuracy but most probably ease in to a more relaxed method over time. I was never that accurate in tracking food even when I lost my weight - consistency was my main aim coupled with making adjustments based on results.

You are scared of two opposing things but you need to override your emotional feeling of fear of significant regain without a prolonged calorie surplus (illogical and false) and use your analytical mind to realise that undereating will indeed result in losing weight when you don't want to (logical and true).

The same rules apply at maintenance as they do when you are gaining weight or losing weight, you are just altering your calorie balance according to your goal at the time.

Maybe it would help if you did some maths?
Say your maintenance calories are surprisingly low and you accidently raise your eating level to a 100cal/day genuine surplus. In thirty five days you might gain a whole pound of fat. Thirty five days.....
Is that really scary?
Is that easily reversible if it actually happened?

amarquis792 wrote: »

Hi all- new here to the whole maintenance thing and I am really struggling and worried because i definitely feel like i keep losing although i really am not trying to. I have been scared to increase my calories so i am doing it very very slowly.

I am still doing mainly cardio where right now the gym's are not open- but I am starting to notice when I look in the mirror I am seeing more bones and it scares me. How do I stop my body from losing fat and muscle?

Also- it might be a silly question but when people work on maintaining, how rigid are you with tracking little things like condiments that you might eat with foods, ie: ketchup, dipping sauces, etc. Do you incorporate these and still track these in your MFP diaries once you are trying to work on maintaining? Any advice and support would be appreciated! Struggling hard core over here

It takes getting used to. You're not alone. Lots of people ease out of a deficit when they reach GW (or close to it), meaning they add 100 calories/day for a couple weeks then add another 100 calories/day for another couple weeks and continue on in that fashion until the scale weight trends even. If you're a numbers person, tracking carefully during this time can help you compute your actual (vs. estimated) TDEE. But it's not essential. I've been in maintenance a long time, and I generally track loosely every day. I don't bother with low calorie condiments, spices, coffee (but I do track cream in my coffee ) Without a doubt, I go through spells when I slack on tracking -- vacation or an urgent work/family issue or life's changing priorities -- and my weight always creeps up during those times, never down. No worries. That's life! When I hit the top of my 5 lb range, that's when I start logging accurately and eating in a deficit for 10 weeks to lose 5 lbs. Regaining and relosing the last 5 lbs repeatedly is my definition of maintenance success. Congrats on reaching goal. Give yourself time to get the hang of maintenance.

PAV8888 wrote: »

sijomial wrote: »

amarquis792 wrote: »

Hi all- new here to the whole maintenance thing and I am really struggling and worried because i definitely feel like i keep losing although i really am not trying to. I have been scared to increase my calories so i am doing it very very slowly.

I am still doing mainly cardio where right now the gym's are not open- but I am starting to notice when I look in the mirror I am seeing more bones and it scares me. How do I stop my body from losing fat and muscle?

Also- it might be a silly question but when people work on maintaining, how rigid are you with tracking little things like condiments that you might eat with foods, ie: ketchup, dipping sauces, etc. Do you incorporate these and still track these in your MFP diaries once you are trying to work on maintaining? Any advice and support would be appreciated! Struggling hard core over here

@amarquis792

To struggle at first is quite common.
You need to keep weighing yourself (preferably monitoring your trend and ignoring normal fluctuations) then you know if you are losing, don't rely on feelings. There are too many feelings in your post TBH and this would be an easy feeling to replace with cold hard data.

"How do I stop my body from losing fat and muscle?" - eat more, it's as simple as that (simple and easy are not the same thing of course).

People maintain with all different levels of rigidity and accuracy but most probably ease in to a more relaxed method over time. I was never that accurate in tracking food even when I lost my weight - consistency was my main aim coupled with making adjustments based on results.

You are scared of two opposing things but you need to override your emotional feeling of fear of significant regain without a prolonged calorie surplus (illogical and false) and use your analytical mind to realise that undereating will indeed result in losing weight when you don't want to (logical and true).

The same rules apply at maintenance as they do when you are gaining weight or losing weight, you are just altering your calorie balance according to your goal at the time.

Maybe it would help if you did some maths?
Say your maintenance calories are surprisingly low and you accidently raise your eating level to a 100cal/day genuine surplus. In thirty five days you might gain a whole pound of fat. Thirty five days.....
Is that really scary?
Is that easily reversible if it actually happened?

I'm quoting @sijomial because I'm in agreement with all he says.

One thing that he doesn't address directly is the "tiny tiny careful increase at a time" aspect which I often see suggested.

I don't see a benefit to being coy about immediately moving to what is known to be our minimal potential balancing point.

Yes, I realize that it may be scary and we may prefer to increase gradually for various reasons. But I believe that this has to be addressed rationally and firmly from the get go.

If we know we have been losing at an effective deficit of say... throwing random numbers... 350 Cal a day based on the changes to our weight trend over the past 4-6 weeks, then there is zero reason to be "testing the waters" 100 Cal at a time. Unless we are actually OK if we, or even WANT to, continue to losing weight.

Our minimal potential balancing point will be the 350 Cal our most recent losses indicate. And it is actually extremely likely that the ultimate actual balancing point will be higher than what our most recent losses indicate, if we have been in a substantial, or prolonged, deficit.

Once we've cleared the "big" initial increase from our known deficit position to the minimal potential balancing point, sure, then we may want to be more cautious when it comes to further increases in intake and do so gradually 100 Cal at a time while keeping an eye on our weight trend. But the initial increase? What is the benefit of drawing it out?

With people who are very stressed about regain, that very probable immediate scale jump from +350 all at once (just water weight/digestive contents, not fat) can be a problem. It's a little hard to tell from a post who's in this category, but some will eat more, see that (fake) jump, and fall back to too-deep deficit because "they gain if they eat more".

I'm betting you've seen the external signs of this, in some threads in the past, with an OP who says that they lose fine on 1200 (or whatever), but anytime they go above that they gain weight: Oh me, oh my, what to do, broken metabolism, doom, stress, etc.

Sometimes, the 100 calories per day, increasing each week for 3 (and a half ) weeks will keep the scale noise-level at a magnitude that doesn't cause such a reaction. Clearly, the water/digestive-contents gain is NBD from an analytic standpoint, but it can be a BD from a gut-reaction standpoint, for some.

I'm not saying that's true of the person who's asking in this case, I'm just answering the bolded question with a generic possible reason. It's certainly the reason why I've sometimes suggested it to people, based on my reading of a post.

ETA: On an analytic level, what you suggest is completely logical. And for someone who's gotten substantially too thin, it's objectively a better approach, considering physical health as paramount.

I lost 53 pounds when I was 49. It took me a year to get there. I started with Weight Watchers and once I had the knowledge and tools in place (measure portions, choose healthier options, if you have a bad eating day, simply ignore it the next day and eat better, check in with the scale at least once a week, and get cardiovascular exercise and strength training into your weekly routine). Worked well for almost two years and then life happened. I had rotator cuff surgery, then cervical spinal surgery, and in May 2019 a thoracic spine fusion. The cycle of surgery, recovery, surgery, longer recovery, and surgery, almost a year of recovery took a toll and I gained between 15 and twenty pounds. Rather than despairing, I reminded myself that I still managed to maintain a 33 pound weight loss from my beginning weight. That gave me the grace to stop me from gaining it all back. In order to heal, I needed three things--a super healthy,nutritious diet to heal my nervous system, bones, and muscles, exercise to strengthen my body and regain my independence and stamina, and returning to MFP to manage my goal to take off the weight. Don't think so much about maintaining your exact weight. Instead, focus on creating the behaviors that will allow you to regain momentum when life, aging, and unexpected events mess up your original plan.

Sure, I’ll bite. 125 lb loss maintaining 4 years so far.

My main trick is to test my blood sugar often and eat foods which keep my blood glucose within healthy levels. I am a diabetic and doing this for me means staying under about 45 g net carbs per meal and cutting out most refined carbs, which spike my glucose. I could overeat fat and protein, but it’s actually kind of hard to overeat protein, and for me fat is satiating enough that I don’t overeat fat. I log daily since it allows me to count my carbs and plan to log for the rest of my life. However, I have my MFP calorie set to lose 1/2 per week, which give me an extra 250 calories a day for logging errors, so I am pretty relaxed about measuring and estimating. I also weigh daily and if I don’t see my maintenance weight for a while I tighten up my logging. I maintain within a 5 lb range.

Not everyone is going to want to live like a diabetic to maintain a healthy weight and that’s okay! The main thing is eating moderately, eating at home more often than eating out so I can control what goes in my food, and being honest with myself if I start seeing a scale change. If you are in the habit of lying to yourself, say, avoiding the scale because you don’t want to know, or not measuring because it won’t hurt just this once but you know you are lying, nip that attitude in the bud.

I also run three times a week and lift heavy twice, with two days of lighter recovery, usually a dance class. My rule about this is I never skip working out because I just don’t feel like it. There has to be a real reason, and whatever that reason is, I have to honestly answer the question, “So do you foresee this being different in the future?” For example, it’s cold so I want to skip my run. Is this an unusually cold day, like there is a weather warning for just this day, and tomorrow will be warmer? Then put it off. But if it’s just a normal January day and the next two weeks are going to be just as cold, suck it up and get out there. Maybe I’m tired because I stayed up too late. Was there some special occasion like a friend from out of town who I haven’t seen in three years, or am I just a person who stayed up browsing the internet instead of going to bed? It’s okay to miss one workout for a special occasion, but there’s no reason to believe I am going to be the sort of person who gets to bed instead of playing on the internet tomorrow if I’m not that person today.

I am one of the refugees from Spark People determined to continue my nearly 12 years of maintenance over here
My main tool is to weigh myself first thing every morning in my PJs. Fluctuations don't bother me. Fluctuate means up AND down. If the scale only goes up day after day after day, that's not fluctuations, it's a TREND.
Then I take a hard, realistic look at what I have been doing and even return to tracking my food.

I am not alone. Here's a list of those maintaining right along with me.
Congratulations to our September maintainers!

Sep 1: GLORIAMAJDI, 8 years!
Sep 2: PATTI_PAL1, 8 years!
Sep 13: ROSEWAND, 11 years! www.myfitnesspal.com/profile/rosewand
Sep 13: TZAPP22, 4 years! wherevermyheartleads.me
Sep 23: DDOORN, 12 years!

I’ve been gaining and losing the same 10 pounds for about 5 years now but since I started running a few months ago , I’m having to eat more cause the weight is falling off. So Iv finally found my secret !

I don’t run but I started walking during lockdown and I’ve lost pounds and inches. I’m now at the lower end of a healthy BMI which was not something I intentionally set out to achieve, having successfully maintained a slightly higher weight for about 5 years through daily logging and keeping within a weekly calorie goal. The latter, plus my personal choice to abstain from rather than moderate certain foods, is what I would credit for my maintenance success. It only took me about 35+ years of yo-yo dieting, and being overweight/obese, to finally find something that works for me!