One year ago today I reached my goal weight

wowowow!!!! congrats!!! my love lost 161 lbs and has kept it off for 5 yrs!! slight regain, yes... but, every day, i love her no matter what!!

Congrats on keeping it off! WTG!

Wow you look amazing!!!

Tami, you are such an inspiration to me! I am a 41-year-old woman and I'm gettin' fit over 40 as well! I follow you on FB and your blog and I think you are amazing! Congratulations on keeping it off for a year girlie xoxoxoxoxo

Thanks for the post. Helps to know that I'm not alone in feeling it is harder to maintain than lose! I'm 41 and been maintaining for 4-5 months. Still logging everything, probably always will. Which is fine with me - it does give me a sense of accomplishment and control. But it would have been nice to know how hard maintaining is before I got here.

Great to hear from a maintainer! Thanks for sharing that. Maintenance sort of seems scary, but mostly because I don't think we hear enough about it! If 100 people lose weight this way or at that speed, what does it say about maintaining? NOTHING that's what! So thanks.

well said!

Congrats on your weight loss and just as important, your maintaining that loss. Nothing wrong with a 5 lbs window. I've lost weight a couple times and haven't been able to maintain the loss. this time I have to come up with new goals and keep myself at the numbers I want to be. Cholesterol, body composition (body fat), and other health numbers as well as just fitting into my clothes. I also have to do something about a slight weight gain when it happens and not wait until I am 30-40 lbs overweight.

WTG! It's awesome and inspirational what you've done.

Thank you for sharing your story..it's nice to see a post from a face that greets me everytime I go to log in. It is a great learning process and you are an amazing inspiration. GREAT job you have done!!!

I still have a long way to go to get to my goal weight, but I figured that maintaining would just be a matter or figuring out what my "real" BMR is and just eating to match. The problem will be that your "real" BMR will be almost impossible to figure out and everything else is an estimate. Even if we get a good guess at the BMR, our activity level is another estimate, the calories we burn exercising is an estimate. When we're trying to lose (or gain) weight it's easy, as long as we're moving in the right direction... I guess my point is that my expectation is that maintenance will always have to be a balancing act, tweaking up and down as necessary, between water-retention and inaccuracies in everything else I figure I should be happy to maintain my weight + or - 5 (or 10 pounds)...

So congratulations! I appreciate your story, I hope I am managing my expectations properly for when I reach my goal weight, I expect I'll be using this site (or one like it) for the rest of my life.