Third time here. Following a plant based diet and time-restricted eating with MFP. Friend me!

Hi, and welcome back!

Have you connected with this group, which is focused on plant-based eating:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/45-happy-herbivores

I don't know how many there may be doing TRE + plant based, but there's at least one common factor.

I hear what you're saying about maintenance: I'm in year 5+ maintaining, so far so good, but it does require a level of attention permanently (worth it, to me, after 30 years before that of obesity: I feel so. much. better.). It helped me to consciously treat weight loss as an experiment in how to eat and be active in ways that I could sustain permanently, with that little bit of a calorie deficit there as a cushion in case of experiments that didn't work out. When I hit goal weight, I gradually added back calories to sustain my weight, but didn't need to make any big changes at all, just keep up my established habit. I don't think it's necessary to treat the entire weight loss process as maintenance practice, but I always encourage folks to do that in the last months of loss. It's so much easier if one has practiced, established habits to fall back on, for a personalized, simple, manageable approach.

There are also some good threads over in the Goal: Maintaining Weight part of the Community, with tips about maintenance.

I'm probably not a great MFP friend candidate: I'm kind of disorganized about participating in that part of MFP (more of a forum gal), and while I eat large amounts of plant sourced foods (been vegetarian for almost 47 years now), but am ovo-lacto veg, and TRE doesn't suit me. I'm also old enough to be your granny 😆. From that perspective of age, it's a great plan to dial in good habits and an ongoing healthy weight as early as possible in life: If I'd done that, I probably could've avoided some bad stuff that happened, and that was more likely because of my excess body weight for so long.

Hoping you can connect here with the right people here, and reach long-term success!

DaFibble wrote: »

Thanks AnnPT77, I have just joined that group.

That was an inspiring post. 5+ years maintaining is impressive. If I have to maintain indefinitely I will do what I can to accomplish that, because I know from the last 10 years that being close to my ideal weight makes pretty much everything better in my life, including my long-term health prospects!

Nothing I'm planning to do during the initial weight-loss period would be dropped during maintenance. It will (hopefully) be a matter of tweaking a bit here and there until I know I've got a good balance. I'm also prepared to go into maintenance if I find the last 10 pounds really difficult. Last time I hit what felt like an impenetrable wall of hunger at 180lbs and tried far too hard to push through it, which resulted in using some unhealthy, expensive methods to lose weight that I could never have kept going in the long term. Anyway, I will not make that mistake again!

Anecdotally, it seems like people are more likely to experience extreme hunger pangs someplace later in the process if they lose at a rate that's really too fast for their current body weight, or who try to reach extreme leanness (like single-digit body fat percent, or close to that, among men). I'm too self-indulgent to have either of those strategies 😉 (I like food so don't lose fast, have landed now at BMI 20-point something, which I think is somewhere in the lower 20s BF%, which seems OK for an active, senior woman (I'm 65)).

You don't say how much you have to lose now in total, but - also anecdotally - some people seem to find refeeds or diet breaks useful to avoid that "extreme hunger" snap-back, too - something about resetting hunger/appetite hormones, I think. More info here:

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10604863/of-refeeds-and-diet-breaks/p1

Cheers!