Good morning everyone,

It's Pina here from Australia and I'm a long term maintainer.
I trust you are all well and finding your maintenance a breeze (unlike me).
I am convinced that each year is a bit tougher for me and I've had to allow myself more lenience in my 'set point' weight this year.
I'm currently on the Fast Metabolism Diet, which is a 1 month plan to 'refresh' sluggish metabolism. It's worked for me in the past and is always a last resort. I would love to find a much simpler way to maintain my weight. Hopefully 3FC will steer me in that direction.

Not only have I been recording calories and macros for the last 2 years, but I'm also jumping from one plan to another to see which works best.
Because I've allowed myself to be rewarded by the scales, even a small variation in daily weighs is frustrating.

I've noted you a very keen exercisers and do more than me. I enjoy 6 x brisk 30 min sunrise walks/ week and 2 x 30 min handweights + pilates-yoga sessions /week.

By the way, we all deserve a huge applause for maintaining I realise why the term "lifestyle" has replaced "diet".

Looking forward to chatting and sharing notes with you.
All the best,

Hi, Pina, and welcome!

I am not a long-term maintainer yet, but I've been a short-term maintainer several times, lol. Previous times, I most often took the usual calorie counting eat-several-times-a-day approach but it was always a struggle and never felt truly sustainable to me. And it wasn't. Over the years, I've also inched my setpoint skyward. As I approach my retirement years, I'm a little less interested in wearing a bikini.

I have been much more content with my approach this time, which is primarily based on eating just one meal a day (which I had not started out expecting to do... I started with an eating window and just kept shrinking it). I throw in a lot of aspects of other approaches too, but OMAD is what makes it different this time. I love knowing that I will have a very satisfying meal every day and that I can go out to eat and it's not even off-plan (more importantly, no heartbreak of going back "on plan" the next day).

As for exercise, I walk on a treadmill, which I have set up so that I can browse the web at the same time (like now!). As a result, it's pretty easy to rack up about 10K steps on my fitbit a day. I don't do anything else although I'm sure it would be good for me.

Anyway, while you are experimenting, you might try out an eating window. There are supposed to be some health advantages for limiting your eating to even a 12 hour window (to avoid constantly raising your insulin/blood sugar levels). Good luck, I hope you find some technique that works well for you!

Lovely to meet you yoyoma I envy you for stabilizing with OMAD. It looks so simple and doable. I have a 12 hr eating window at the moment. I'm up at 4:00 am for my sunrise walk and eat every 3 hrs - 3 meals and 2 snacks (even that keeps me hungry). My dinner is at 4 pm. That's too early for my husband, but I'm used to preparing separate meals.
I will have to get into a swimsuit in August for out Sth. Pacific-Hawaii cruise and no amount of exercise will improve diminishing elasticity...that's life.

Hi there maintainers,
I'm back and doing OK on the Dukan staircase for maintenance. I've even lost a bit over the last 4 months on this plan. Has anyone used it or are on it now?

hi Pina, i'm just about to start my maintenance journey so thought i'd say hi. I may or may not live somewhere close to you?!! Sorry, i'm not familiar with the Dukan diet though. Your story doesn't sound like maintenance is something i should be joyous to reach though! Sorry to hear you have to work at it so much continuously.

Hi ang82,
Congrats on reaching maintenance..bravo! If you've found the right plan and you know your boudaries, maintenance will be easy. I just like to play around a bit with different eating styles, macros, calories and exercise. It's become an enjoyable hobby for me....not really a hard slog at all.(I should change the name of the thread)
Nice to shake hands with a fellow Aussie .

I don't think this thread is active any longer...shame.

Pina, come on over to the active thread:
https://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/liv...ng-coming.html
You can get caught up on the posts from others. The most recent post is on page 22.
A new thread gets started when the number of posts is around 500.