Which is harder for you?
 

Is it harder for you to...

a. Lose weight?

or

b. Maintain your healthy/ideal weight?

:?:

I already knew this about myself but it hit me so hard last night: I can lose weight easily (and gain easily, lol... well, painfully but also quickly), but maintaining is near impossible for me. I flutter between about 110 & 120 usually, then about once/year I put on an extra 5-15 lbs. Then I commit myself and drop back to 110ish.

I know I'm far from alone in struggling to maintain, but I'm wondering in general which is harder for you all.

Totally b for me.

At this point, I don't even think I am going to try to maintain a steady maintenance weight. Instead, I am going to aim for smaller fluctuations in the future.

"Smaller fluctuations"... BIG thumbs up!

Maintaining is hard , you have to remember it is forever. There is no such thing as going on a diet, reaching goal and just magically staying at goal weight. If you want to keep it off you have to work at it, BUT it is worth it !

Maintaining is hard. It feels near impossible to go to the gym when you have no "whoosh" to look forward to on the scale.

I'm the opposite.

It is very hard for me to lose weight, but it is also hard for me to gain it.

For me, it seems like once my body reaches a set point (and not necessarily my "ideal,"), it just wants to stick there. I can calorie count and exercise like crazy, and if I lose at all, it's just a few ounces each week. Or I can be a sloth and eat a bunch of crap, and the scale only creeps higher at a slow pace.

Unfortunately, my body "sets" itself at points where I'm not comfortable.

Of course, who knows? I may have trouble maintaining, too. I haven't been at my "ideal" weight for quite a few years.

Oh man, these responses are so discouraging! :( I am struggling getting off these last 7 pounds but now I'm getting a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that maintaining is going to be MORE of an issue.

I guess this means I'll be a lifer on this message board when it comes to needing help and motivation! :) (But that's OK, I love you gals!)

B, Without A Doubt!

I'm at my set point right now, so maintaining isn't hard work at all.
I fluctuate around 1-2 kgs but that's about.
So getting myself down 3-4 more kgs seem impossible right now. I once dropped down to 54 kg, but just about 1 week later of eating "not really THAT good" and i'm back up 56 kg.
So yes, B is much easier.

I've come to realize that and getting myself to exercise more to be toned so I wouldn't focus on my weight numbers on scale. Since getting toner might be easier than losing the last few kgs right now.

I think losing weight in harder. Since I haven't started dieting and exercising, I am become so accustomed to eating well that I know how to easily make the choices that need to be made. I won't lie though, sometimes I don't always have the best self-control but when I have a bad day/bad night/whatever, it is very easy for me to bounce back and drink 8-10 glasses of water, exercise, and stick to my calorie limit for the next day because I know, I HAVE to do it if I don't want to gain weight.

Losing seems to be harder for me, especially as I get older. My sophomore year of college the scale creeped up to 135 lbs and I couldn't fit in my jeans anymore. I didn't realize it because I wore sweats to class every single day! My eating habits were horrible -- I'd eat a Chic Fil A sandwich for lunch, a 12 pack of nuggets, fries, AND a coke (I'm not even kidding). I also frequented Popeye's and KFC. I didn't exercise, either... And wabam, my texas-sized *** could no longer fit in my jeans.

When I hit the gym and altered my eating habits, I lost weight FAST. It only took me 1 month to lose 10 pounds or so. Then it took me another month to lose another 5-7 pounds.

Now I'm losing at a rate of 1 pound every 2 weeks and I am working SO much harder than I did when I lost weight my sophomore year. I exercise my butt off, rarely take a day off, and eat super healthy. It's hard being an old maid! ;)

Losing seems harder...whenever I gain weight, it's all 'at once' (this time it was holiday weight! All between Thanksgiving and Christmas!) and then even though I feel like I'm pigging out day-to-day the scale would stay the same. Right now I have my daily allowance set low in order to lose weight, on days where I feel like I've totally cheated and pigged out I realize that I'm still technically under my maintenance calories!

We'll see how easy it is to stay on plan when I hit goal and bring my calorie counter back up a few hundred cals.

Losing is way harder for me !
I don't even count calories when I go on maintenance. I probably eat around 1800 cals per day, and I eat far less healthy than I do when I'm losing, but I'm never gaining back.

neither...I've learned I'm living 'this' way forever! Always going to portion control and eat healthy and always going to exercise! No changes! That my friend is the lifestyle you need...something where you don't need to think about it all the time...or 'try' at it...It just is what it is...your life done easy and practical...lifestyle change!

i haven't reached maintaining part yet, but it does seem harder. coz u'd be looking good by then, so there would be less motivation to keep on excercising and not eating things u like.

Given my trackrecord - I would say maintaining! Everytime I conciously try to loose (this is the 3rd time in 12yrs) I actually succeed quite 'easily'. But the simple fact that I just started for the 3rd time shows I suck at maintaining. Though have to admit - I have never been educating myself as much as I am right now, so with the lessons learnt and this board, I actually think that once I get there... maintaining is gonna be just as easy/diffcult as loosing. ;)

I would definitely say maintaining is harder. I lose weight fairly quickly once I put my mind to it but it's hard once you start to see progress not to slip back into old habits and have a 'screw it' attitude, lol. I've tried before to make changes and within a few months I fell off the bandwagon. But not this time, the stakes are too high for me. Heart disease runs in my family and I have a responsibility to be healthy and strong so I can see my two sons become adults. I realize now that I'm the only one in control of my life so I've got to take it seriously.