aserranzana16 Member

Before photo: August 2013, probably 140. I don't have any full body shots of me at my heaviest, because I hated getting my picture taken at that time. I wasn't crazy overweight, but I had been much lighter (between 105 and 110) for most of my adult life. Somehow I let myself slip for something like 4 years. I exercised,…

...that they sell bags of Miss Vickie's Jalapeno Chips for $.40 in the vending machine on the 15th floor of my office building.

Grain salads! I love them. Use whatever grain you like best, but I tend to do a lot of farro and barley. I love this blog: http://cookieandkate.com/category/food-recipes/salads/ She has a ton of really fun grain salad recipes. And the nice thing is, you can cook up a huge pot of grains on Sunday, then eat them for the rest…

I think that goal is entirely doable, and I think it's smart to set a more realistic goal for yourself. I am 5'1'', started at 139.4 in March and for 3 months, was so very, very strict with my diet and exercise. I reached 109.4 in June. But because I was so strict, it was difficult for me to maintain, and I ended up…

^ All of this. ^ I'm 5'1", started at 139 and am currently at 108-110. Before I started weighing and measuring my food, I was convinced that I was eating healthy. Turns out, that "1200" I thought I was eating was more like 1800-2000...I had to train myself to be diligent about adding things like oil, butter, mayo, etc. On…

I'm 5'1", and my maintenance range is 105-110, but I feel like I start to look weird and bobblehead-y when I get down to the low end of that.

First, congratulations! What an amazing accomplishment. You must be stoked. With regard to the stall, it's likely that your body has just adapted to the level of activity you've been doing, and is doing it more efficiently now - which means less calories burned. You may want to try revving up your workouts with some light…

Not really fail, since I budgeted for it, but plan on splurging on movie popcorn with EXTRA butter tonight.

YUP, agreed, I had to cut them out completely. The cookies & cream ones were doing me in.

Congrats, and thank you for your blog post - it's really inspiring for someone like me (just starting on my maintenance journey)! What a great outlook.

Oh, no! Don't be upset! That was the opposite of what I intended with the post. I completely understand your desire to not have to continue logging ALL THE DAMN TIME, but from what I understand, it can be pretty detrimental to your health to yo-yo...that might just be for extreme weight swings, though. 5 lbs might not be…

I feel you on the "pathetic" nature of maintenance calories (I'm 5'1") and the idealized view of maintenance. Sigh. What I'm seeing from all these replies (which are all great!) we just have to find our joy in living life at a healthier weight...

It's the former. I'm just being silly. I need to learn to be able to motivate myself with things other than scale numbers. I've just signed up for some new workout classes, and I'm hoping that changing it up will help!

Well, exactly, that's what doesn't make sense - objectively, I know that I worked really hard, and that I'm undoing that work. But somehow that's not stop me from sliding down the rabbit hole. It's really weird. Thank you for the sympathy, though, it's nice to know I'm not the only one.

This is great advice. Maybe I'll start running races. What kind of new goals have you set for yourself?

You've maintained for 18 months? You're my hero, that's discipline. I definitely think setting new goals might help. I think I experienced a bit of...depression? once I hit my goal weight. Like, oh, I did it, now what?

I'm still logging as diligently as I was when I was losing weight, but for some reason, it's not having the same deterrent effect as it did when I was in loss mode.

New development: same pattern, just more dramatic. I commented before that I I had stalled out for more than a week and that I finally dropped a couple of pounds. Since then, I dropped another couple of pounds in a matter of days (4 lbs in the span of 5-6 days), came back up 2 lbs, and have been hanging out here for a…

5'1", CW is 113. I thought I wanted to get down to 105, but in re-evaluating, I may be good at this weight.

I want to be more like you! 42 lbs lost is amazing. It's still hard for me to look in the mirror, but it's important to be realistic about where I am and how far I've come, and to be happy with the fact that, with MFP, I've managed to lose weight in a more healthy way than I have ever.

Yeah, I think that's the right attitude. At first, it was great motivation for me to weigh myself every day because the number was consistently dropping and that felt amazing and made me want to continue. But I think once we all establish a healthy pattern of eating and working out regularly, it's a good idea to maybe…

Yeah, that's kind of why I started this topic - I've been nervous to change my goals even a little. But I'll try it out.

By no means! It's kind of short-hand for the way I calculate calories - I've got some interesting math skills. If you look at my individual diary entries (not this week, because I haven't been doing great at hitting my calorie goals due to work), I eat quite a lot.

Thanks, that's helpful! Once you gain that initial 3-3.5 and continue at maintenance, do you find that it settles at that new (higher) weight? Or does it go back down after the initial gain?

Thanks for the quick replies, everyone! I guess it won't kill me to try out the gradual increase thing. Especially because I just don't know if I can reasonably get to 105 without falling into some unhealthy behaviors. I'll take my foot off the gas a little this week (go from 2 lbs per week to 1 lb) and next week I'll take…

That's amazing! Congratulations!!!!!!!!

I used to have this problem for sure - I watch a lot of television in the evening, and it was often accompanied by after dinner snacking and drinking. One thing that I have started doing is going for long walks after dinner. Not only do you keep yourself occupied so that you don't have food handy and you're not thinking…

I just experienced this. I had a really good couple of weeks, and then this weekend, went pretty far over both Saturday and Sunday (though I worked out a lot, too). I was scared to get on the scale after that, but over the last two days, have dropped 2 lbs total for my lowest weight yet! It started me reading about calorie…

Nope, that's the best price I've seen so far...

5'1" and built pretty solidly. Shooting for between 105 and 110.