As I am in “Restart”, too I like your ideas….I went back and read my profile and why I wanted to lose weight to start with!…I still want to continue losing for the same reasons!….keeping 75 pounds off of the 110 I had lost has been huge…at least I am not back at the very beginning!…I would have been in a few more months if I had continued binging….every day you go a little further on this journey is a win…losing a little is better than gaining….trust in the process because we know it works!…I hope you have a winning day and welcome back!

Hmmm, picture some hamsters...up on their hind legs...noses twitching in excitement. Sensing they're about to be unleashed to play havoc and wreak some severe damage.

I've spent lots of time with an old friend this weekend. I've known her 20 years. Once she was rail thin, with very disordered bulimic eating patterns. After some time in an inpatient eating disorder clinic, she developed a better relationship with food, and her weight increased from 42kg to 100kg. That was about 7 years ago. Then she discovered cycling. Got better at cycling. And better. And better. Her excess kilos started to melt away. Her weight stabilised five years ago at 56kg. Last weekend she finished her first 1000km audax, in under 60 hours. Phenomenal.

Anyway, we did some cycling together this weekend, and she took the opportunity to evangelise about her way of controlling her weight. She doesn't own any bathroom or kitchen scales. She doesn't track calories or restrict her calorie intake in any way. She's a clean-living vegan. No booze. No fast food. And she relies on exercise to maintain her weight (she's a UK size 8/10). Her routine cycling burns about 5,000 - 7000 calories a week. On an audax she can pretty much burn that in 12 hours. She refuels accordingly. Plenty of avocados, dates, bananas, houmous, veggie sushi, Clif bars and peanut-butter-filled wholewheat pittas. Gummy bears and jelly babies for quick energy boosts.

Throw away your scales and stop being in thrall to calories! she urged. Just have fun riding your bike and the weight will take care of itself...

Ooooh, how the hamsters loved that! Never seen them sit up so quickly, whiskers quivering... A seed's been planted and I'm desperately trying to grub it out before it grows roots and turns my carefully tended weight-management garden into a rampantly uncontrolled weed bed!

I don't think any of us here will not have to make SOME compromises in order to control weight long term. My view is that the least impactful and easiest on you compromises, the ones you're willing to live with are the best ones to make.

Picking realistically reliable ones that you're likely to stick to long term is fairly important too.

But if it becomes TOO obsessive too rule bound too restrictive too intense too impactful on your real life and starts causing distress... well... chill pill hamster management may be best!

I am EXPECTING PICTURE LINKS tonight/tomorrow! M'OK???? :

Laurie, after many years there are glimmers that the body (when allowed by the 🐹s and not overridden by super yummy I want to keep eating because it's good not because I'm hungry--or the multitude of reasons we each have), anyway, there are glimmers that appetite does scale up and down.

I regularly range from 2500 to 3500 in terms of intake to correspond with activity without feeling particularly more or less hungry.

I too over rely on (relatively less strenuous than the cycling monsters above) activity that I enjoy. The enjoy part is the best.

The rely part is where if I don't get up and move during the day I do get extra cold. And me being cold is not good for the Calories 😉 so we will see how that evolves. Keep in mind that no one that I know has ever has argued that being sedentary is GOOD even though it is obviously something that happens for various reasons