Winter Months Strategies?

Exactly that. It sounds like you're diet fatigued anyway. No need to make yourself miserable over the holiday season. It's fine to take a break. It's healthy to take a break. Your goal should be to maintain, plus maybe a few pounds of water weight increase.

Keeping up steps count and other exercise might be harder, with weather often a good reason to do less. If you have equipment at home then you might be find it easier to keep active, even if that's as little as some dumbbells, kettlebells or bands.

Yes definitely go to maintenance and take a break for a bit.

One option is to rely more on soups in the winter. A cup of hot soup before a meal will take the edge off your hunger. It also makes a good main dish that doesn't have a lot of calories. A cup of sugar free hot chocolate satisfies my sweet tooth with less than 100 calories when I come in from a walk or run in the cold. Apples and grapefruit are good winter fruits that are very filling.

The big hints to me is the increasing activity plus unsustainable plus past the six month mark.

10lbs a month is really fast (not just "solid" loss) unless you're still within the morbidity obese range in terms of excess energy reserves that are available to be lost.

You may be surprised as to how much more willing you may be to count calories if you switch away from viewing calories counting as a way to impose restriction. Perhaps view counting as a way to maximize intake. Within the parameters of achieving your goals.

But a more reasonable goal at this time may be achieving deficits in the 250 to 500 Cal a day range as opposed to the 750 to 1250 you've been posting based on your actual losses.

0.5% or even 0.25% of body weight loss a week is slower than 1% or 0.75%, but a *** kittens *** load faster than regain!

Sustainability of effort wins every time. So try to make things as easy as you can so you can keep on keeping on.

Have you, every so often, gone back to the Guided Set Up page and re-saved? MFP doesn't auomatically calculate the lower calorie requirement needed as we lose weight, so that may be why your rate of loss has slowed. However, slowing your rate of loss is definitely a good idea, as is a couple of weeks or a month at Maintenance, to give yourslef a bit of a break. Switch to Maintenance. When you've had a bit of a break, reselect to 'lose' but select a slower rate than whatever you currently have chosen. As Pav8888 says, losing slowly is infinitely better than gaining. Unless you have a health emergency and have to lose weight fast, under medical supervision, if it takes a long time to lose another 40lbs, that's fine. It's learning / practice for how you'll be eating for the rest of your life if you want to maintain your lower weight.

Making lighter versions of winter meals is a good idea. Look at where the higher calories come from and reduce the quantity of those items / increase the quantity of more filling, lower calorie ingredients.

I make my own chicken and vegetable soup. One carcass and lots of water, on a low heat for an hour. Fish out all the skin, bones etc then, whilst pulling bits of meat off the bones etc, I add loads of chopped veg (onion, broccoli, courgette, mushroom, carrots, tomatoes etc) and herbs to the pot. I re-add any large bones once I've taken the meat off (easy enough to find in amongst the veg) and simmer for another half an hour until the veg is soft. Mash with a potato masher (or whizz some of the veg mix in a blender and then re-add to the pot). Add in the chicken flakes that I've taken off the bones. And stir. A big pot usually does me 4 or 5 lunches at around 110 cals a day.

I also make things like fish or cottage pie, but put a much thinner layer of potato on top than the recipe suggests. Vegetable chilli and many curries and stews are filling and can be low cal. The question is what you serve them with. I've pretty much ditched having potatoes, rice or pasta at home and have a bed of veg (usually sauted, finely sliced white cabbage) with almost everything.

You talk about deprivation. Why are you depriving yourself? Do you plan to be deprived for the rest of your life? Lowering your rate of weight loss per week will give you more calories to eat. Build things into your diary. Many of us log ahead of eating, to see what we have space for. I'll happily skip potatoes in favour of a glass of wine. Someone on here once said that the winner is the person who can eat the most and still lose weight.

@fatbitt I had to look up black beans after your comment. They are considered satiating, and relative to other foods they presumably rank quite high in that respect. I doubt they're anywhere near as effective as GLP1 drugs though.

I should get some for home, thanks for reminding me. I like them in texmex meals when I'm out, but for some reason I never think to have any at home.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022316625000896