Two years ago today I stepped on the scales and it said 135 for the first time since I was in junior high school. That day I thought I had reached an “end” — an end to dieting and a beginning of a new life in a smaller body.
As I sit here and reflect back on the past two years, I see now that it was an end only to the losing phase of my “diet” (of course, it’s a way of life now, not a diet). Reaching my goal weight was the end of a year of losing weight but the very beginning of the greater challenge:
keeping the weight off for the rest of my life.
Last year, on my first anniversary of reaching goal, I wrote a post about my thoughts on maintenance:
Today Is My One Year Anniversary! Today I went back and re-read that post to see if maintenance looks any differently to me now that I have another year of it under my belt. I have to say that I won’t change a word of the post, but would emphasize my first two points even more strongly:
- MAINTENANCE IS HARDER THAN LOSING
- MAINTENANCE DOESNT LOOK ANY DIFFERENT THAN LOSING
An interesting discussion of the whole concept of maintenance developed from that post. One poster thought that “maintenance” was a failure to progress; others thought that since we can’t physically lose weight forever, at some point we have to stop and work on keeping what we’ve achieved. Karen came up with the best definition, in my mind: maintenance =
living.
In the past year, I’ve come to realize that I’m not at all ashamed of simply “maintaining” my weight. Rather than being embarrassed at failing to progress further, I now am truly appreciating what a battle and challenge it is to stay right where I am. This isn't natural and intuitive, folks! It would be incredibly easy to slide right back into my old bad eating habits -- of course they're still with me. I have NO doubt that I could put every pound back on in far less time than it took to come off.
Maintenance — especially long-term maintenance, like years and years — IS harder than losing. I’ve gotten to the point where I admire someone who’s been able to lose and keep off ten pounds more than the person who constantly gains and loses and regains, over and over again. It’s sad — and educational — to find out that some of the big weight loss success stories you read about on the Internet last for about three minutes — about as long as it takes to snap those “after” photos.
And then the diet is over and the weight starts piling back on. It’s happened to all of US, right? I venture to say that every one of us has lost a LOT of weight in his or her life (undoubtedly I’ve lost hundreds of pounds). It’s the failure to KEEP it off that’s the problem.
At the risk of embarrassing her dreadfully, I have to say that one person I have tremendous respect for here at 3FC is our Karen (MrsJim) -- she's maintained a 115 pound weight loss for something like 14 or 15 years now. She's learned how to
LIVE with maintenance and yet she still takes the time to help out all of us as we struggle to find our ways. If it wasn't for me meeting Karen here, I'm not sure I would have believed it could be done (in my Real Life, everyone who loses weight puts it back on). Thank you, Karen, for showing me the way!
The best analogy I’ve been able to come up with for maintenance is running on a treadmill. You have to run hard and fast just to stay in one place and not fly off the back. Likewise, we have to work hard just to keep our weight in one place. For those of us who have struggled with weight issues practically our whole lives, eating “normally” will probably never be natural and intuitive. We’ll still have to think, plan, journal, and do all the things that got us to goal in the first place if we want to stay there.
I’m OK with that. I’m sure all of you would agree that it’s a very small price to pay for all the benefits we get of keeping the weight off for life: health, energy, appearance, self-confidence — some day we should make a list! It would be quite lengthy.
As a society, we focus almost exclusively on losing weight. Hardly anyone talks/writes/thinks/posts about what happens after you reach your goal. Which doesn’t make much sense, since we’re going to spend much more time keeping the weight off than we did losing it — hopefully many decades for most of us. For me, I’ve now spent twice as long maintaining as I spent losing. And the rest of my life is going to be all about maintenance because I can assure you that I’m NEVER going to put those pounds back on.
The Maintainers Forum was created last winter to fill in that gap and give those of us near or at goal a place to share and support each other. I know for sure how much I need all of you to help me keep the weight off for life. Thank you all for being here!
Let me close by saying: wow, I can't believe it's been another year! Two surgeries, DS got diagnosed with diabetes, the usual ups and downs of life -- and I've maintained my weight. I think I'm learning how to
LIVE.
Today Is My Second Anniversary!
CONGRATS!!! 
For me, that's horses (after doing bicycling and Rollerblading and taking different classes at the Rec). Even on days I'm not riding, I can easily spend HOURS at the stable, just playing with Dakota, bathing and grooming him, cleaning tack, etc. Horses might not be your 'thing' but I do recommend finding SOMETHING you love to do - to replace the overemphasis so many of us have on eating and food. 
at 36 weeks, have gained ~45 lbs 
)
Julie-my goal is to be a loser! LOL
MEG!!!
