Maintaining is Scary

well… If you keep counting calories at maintenance, then you still have a daily goal!

I hit Maintenance about a year ago after losing around 170 pounds and 100% it was terrifying.

Losing weight I know, Maintaining I do not.

I got into running so I set goals based around running while still logging everyday. I'm still hanging in there.

Also, don't feel like a failure if your scale goes up. It will. Then down. Then up and down and down and up. Maintenance, some say, is gaining and losing the same five or so pounds over and over and over. So worry not - you still get to lose! You'll just have times you gain too. It's hard to get used to, but if you stick to it, you can do it. If you quit... Then you know what will happen.

I’m glad you’re posting here. You’re not alone and you’re right - the new mindset to maintain takes a different skill set. For me, I had to replace the motivation that kept me losing with motivation that keeps me maintaining. That will look different for each person.

You can also set nutritional goals. I continued to improve the quality of the food I eat by paring down salt, sat fat etc

I also set goals for blood glucose, blood pressure etc

Shifted my focus to Health

(And as others mentioned, exercise goals)

Fred Rogers' weight was also a very specific number that he had an attachment to. It's likely he also fluctuated but was close enough to call it good. He swam daily. They didn't have digital scales, so "close enough" was probably a routine thing for non-certified scales.

His weight was related to three words.

The first word had one letter.
The second word had four letters.
The third word had three letters.
I Love You.
One - Four - Three.
143 pounds made him smile every time he got on the scale.

I did feel anxious about regain at first, but was fairly aware that this was partly magical thinking. Gaining a pound or few has about the same underpinning mechanics as losing a pound or few, just in the opposite direction. We aren't going to suddenly balloon up overnight by eating one candy bar, though it can subtly feel like that at first.

Personally, while there was that nagging anxiety, I didn't experience it as dramatically as hanging off a cliff. (I'm not saying everyone should feel the same, though.)

I feel like a piece of the underlying challenge here is that I'm wired to focus on things (most anything) only for a limited time, then it will slip away if I haven't found a way to get the necessary habits pretty much on autopilot.

Staying at a good weight long term is theoretically simple: Pay attention, and if weight goes up a few pounds and seems to stick there for a while, then cut back on eating or increase activity until it goes back down again. Things only derail if I let it get to so many pounds that the situation is overwhelming. The problem is IMO more that I may stop paying attention, maybe even let denial take over. The few pounds becomes tens of pounds, then whoopsie, I've regained the loss, or a big chunk of it.

I can't (don't want to) let that happen.

So, to me, two key things: Habits that can mostly be autopilot, and vigilance about some tracking metric.

What are the autopilot habits, and what does the vigilance rely on? I think those are both very individual.

On the habit side: According to some reports here, some people who were formerly obese do learn to use intuitive eating to satiation. Some turn to a special way of eating they can continue happily forever that tends to keep them happy at the right calorie level (carnivore, keto, vegan, Mediterranean, whatever). Me, I keep calorie counting most of the time, because it's easy for me and suits my data-geek nature; and I have certain eating patterns (not boringly repetitious to me) that I learned during loss and keep using most days now. There are other options that work for different people. Activity (exercise and daily life) can be part of the habit set, too.

The habit side may not prevent weight loss, but I think it can contribute to any regain being slow, as compared to the "lose weight fast, then go back to normal eating/activity" thing that seems implicitly to be a common approach.

On the vigilance side: Some people (including me) keep watching the scale. (I weighed myself each morning for years even before committing to lose weight. I still do that, and put the result in a weight trending app.) Some people (also including me) use fit of certain clothes. Some people use a tape measure. There are probably other options here, too.

In a way, maintaining IMO is a lot like weight loss: We need a personalized strategy and plan, and we need to commit sincerely and fully to implementing it . . . forever, ideally.

Food, eating and activity is also somewhat like financial budgeting. We sometimes cut back spending to save up money (for a house down payment, maybe, or a special vacation, or for retirement). We maybe then spend that extra when the time comes, plus spend a little extra when we're not saving up for that kind of thing. But we don't keep spending and spending and spending (beyond income) . . . or if we do, we end up bankrupt. It relies on habits and vigilance, too.

Just my opinions, though. Since losing from class 1 obese to a healthy weight back in 2015-16, I've admittedly been through several cycles of regain/re-loss, but they've been in the roughly 5-10 pound range, all in a healthy weight range for me, all in the same jeans size. (It helps that I hate to clothes shop! ) I'd been overweight to obese before that for around 30 years, most of my adult life.

For me, that's what maintenance seems to amount to: Weight creeps up a bit, then I have to creep it back down. I haven't had any dramatic sudden regain yet, and I haven't wanted (or needed) to do any dramatic calorie deficit or other intervention to re-lose lots or lose fast.

I can't say this will work forever, but so far, so good: Habits + vigilance is working OK.