Why is maintaining weight loss harder than losing weight?

I've known a few people who have lost everything they want, and then because they're at their goal weight they start eating the same crap they did before. Then they gain everything back and whine because it has all come back plus some.

I think there are people that just don't make this a life style change. Insead they 'diet' and then go right back to what they were doing. If you are committed to making this your new lifestyle, then you have nothing to worry about.

Because you have a different maintenance level when you're 30 pounds lighter. If you eat at maintenance, you will maintain your weight.

Because people think the hard work ends when you reach goal. The effort just shifts. All the learning and tracking and figuring out what worked to lose becomes learning and tracking and figuring out what works to maintain.

because generally people go on a 'diet' where they reduce cals too far, which slows metabolism and the body then burns less cals - they have basically trained their bodies to survive on less food. When they get to goal weight and end the 'diet' and try to eat normally, this is more than the body now needs so the weight goes back on.

Thats why its so important to go for slower loss along with exercise (especially weights). The exercise maintains muscle mass so your body burns more calories, and by eating at a higher level to start with, you dont feel deprived and there is no 'end' to the diet, its just a healthy way of eating that you can keep up forever :-)

Let me lose first then I will worry about the rest. LOL

These answers make a lot of sense. I've thought that I would need to stay on MFP for an extended period after reaching my goal (still another 30lbs to go.) I'm going to need a LOT more healthy recipes! lol

You might want to. That's my plan. I'm going to stick around for at least an additional month and keep tracking calories weighing in daily and watching to make sure my maintenance plan is doing what it should. Then I'll probably drop back to weekly weigh-ins and put a mark on the scale that says "IF DIAL GOES TO HERE, START TRACKING AGAIN!"

If you look at all the long term studies regarding weight loss and maintaining it, basically everything you learn to lose it is wrong when it comes to maintaining loss.

It is said that weight loss is 80% diet. That is, get the intake under control and you'll shed fat and get relatively thin, exercise or no exercise.

The flipside is true for maintenence, that maintaining your loss is 80% exercise. If you look at the data in that big loss and maintain database (I forget the name of it), the common thread is that an extremely high % exercise an hour or more per day.

People that lose it without doing any exercise are almost certain to gain it all back.

There is a ridiculous overfocus on diet when it comes to weight loss because the whole is not considered; by the time people near their fat loss goals they should be in sufficient physical shape for heavy exercise, developed a high exercise lifestyle for themselves, and have discovered a passion for exercise so that the drive is not easily extinguished. Any weight loss plan that does not work toward these goals is an utter waste of time and destined to fail, maybe not right away, but weight rebound is a virtual certainty.

Very, very, very few people can train themselves how to live not on a diet. Thus either diet the rest of your life, which almost all will fail at after they are "done", or develop the exercise habits to blunt the effects of the less than optimal decisions that are made when people are not strictly controlling their intake.

Lets not forget, many fat people's ideal of being that skinny person that just sits around all day is a pipe dream. These people may have existed when younger, where growing bodies induced nontypical effects for adults (most teenage boys that are hardgainers will not be by the time they are in their mid 20's, speaking from experience), but there are very, very few adults who maintain a slim figure without frequent exercise that don't either have an eating/psychological issue of some sort or basically live on diet to diet trying to get that last X lbs for decades.