Maintain or main 'taint?

@belindascott3010 the biggest thing I have learned since yo yo ing all my life is that maintenance is not somewhere you GET TO after losing and then turn it all loose. All it is gaining and losing the same 5 pounds or whatever your range is over longer time frames. And like @Jthanmyfitnesspal says you get to add some more calories. There are a lot of great posts stickied on this category and reading them helped me a lot. My choice to start maintenance was to add just 50-100 for a week or so and monitor and then keep slowly adding. Some folks jump right into a higher # but they are braver than me because the scale does bump up. You got this! Just stay aware and enjoy.

Glad you got your vaxes Jthanmyftp! Smart. I still need to get my flu as I was not feeling well enough to get it at work last week but I am going to wait until my body seems normal and then get it. I don't usually have a reaction but even tho everyone says just get it, I chose to get it in another week or so.

So true though: -→"my body will shut down whenever I'm sitting still (cold hands and feet)— even more so when I'm cutting calories!"

In my case I have no test results that implicate thyroid. But it has always been true for me re circulation to the "edges", even as a teen.

While there exists recently discovered health information that might partially explain some of this now, it is unknown how far back this may have been true.

I'm ALWAYS cold, and I just had my thyroid checked - it's normal. People actually recognize my sweaters at work and will bring it to me if I forget one somewhere!😛

I'm fine with my house at 80 during the summer. Although, I do like it cold in the bedroom, I like snuggling under the blankets. So does my dog!

For me, maintaining hasn't been that difficult because I have continued to be quite active so have a pretty large calorie budget. I don't feel deprived. From what I have read about people who have maintained a large loss for a long period of time, most continue to do daily exercise and many continue to log what they eat. Weighing yourself regularly is also key to keeping the weight off. In the past, I would stop weighing myself when I KNEW i had been eating more than I should. As long as I didn't see the number on the scale, it wasn't real. That's how weight creep happens.

I'm replying to underscore my belief that it'll differ individually somewhat.

I'm in year 9+ of maintaining post loss. Weight has been up and down a few pounds over those years, but all in the healthy range and same jeans size. Before loss, I was oversight/obese for around 30 years.

@spiriteagle99's comment about watching the scale routinely and correcting course before things get out of hand - IMO, that's important.

I did find maintaining subjectively easier after some time passed, but it was probably closer to a couple of years than 6 months. That effect kind of phased in gradually, not instantly at some point like flipping a switch.

I'm skeptical that the mechanism is "set point", partly because I think that term is so vaguely defined in physiological terms that's it's fairly meaningless.

I also found that I got more relaxed with more time in maintenance, as I gained confidence in my ability to manage. I viscerally internalized the idea that I couldn't "ruin everthing" or "gain it all back" from a day or few of eating too much cake or similar. What mattered most was following good routine habits most of the time.

I think an important factor is finding tolerable/practical/happy habits, and practicing then long enough that they're easier to continue than deviate from. They're autopilot after a while, basically. (I don't know about you, but I can't do some extreme, unpleasant, unnatural-feeling thing long enough for that to become autopilot. Finding the right, personalized habits has been important for me.)

Some things that have helped me:

• Not trying to lose weight crazy fast
• Deciding I wasn't going to do anything to lose weight that I wasn't willing to continue forever to stay at a good weight, except for a sensibly moderate calorie deficit until I reached that good weight
• Focusing on habits during loss, rather than daily micromanaging
• Being active - even before loss, in my case - so I had relatively high calorie needs for my demographic
• Having long eaten and liked lots of filling, healthy foods (Gain was mainly from eating to much of those, and too frequent high-calorie treats)
• Not having been a person for whom routine constant "food noise" in my head was a major issue

I'm not saying people can't succeed any other way. They can. We each have different preferences, strengths, challenges and lifestyles. Thinking about those things and personalizing tactics is key, IMO.

Bottom line, I think it can get easier, but that's more likely to happen if we think about how to make it personally easier. It still takes consciousness and attention, though . . . just not necessarily obsession or constant white-knuckled "discipline" or "motivation".