Maile -- As I was reading the description of your meal last night, I was thinking, "Holy cow! I can eat THAT??!!" Then I read how you will make it a rarity. Right back down to earth. :D

Thanks for your continuing support and encouragement. It really helps a lot.

I'm off to the grocery store -- I need to replenish all my maintenance foods. (I have a dedicated shelf in the 'fridge that no one is to take from but me. These are the survival tactics needed to keep any food on hand with a 6' tall 13 y/o in the house. I put certain things on my shelf and "talk mean" and they seem to last better that way.) ;)

sylviesgirl - just to illustrate how weird the scale is, had my bi-weekly weigh in today and after all my worry about stress eating on Sunday I was down a pound. I've been maintaining at 135 for a couple of months and suddenly I'm 134. Go figure.

I encourage the guys in my house to eat the food I buy that I want to eat but it's a hard sell since they do like their junk food. I do draw the line at my quest bars - hands off!

Originally Posted by Ruth Ann:
sylviesgirl - just to illustrate how weird the scale is, had my bi-weekly weigh in today and after all my worry about stress eating on Sunday I was down a pound. I've been maintaining at 135 for a couple of months and suddenly I'm 134. Go figure.

I encourage the guys in my house to eat the food I buy that I want to eat but it's a hard sell since they do like their junk food. I do draw the line at my quest bars - hands off!

Wow, Ruth Ann, do you mean that you have been maintaining at exactly 135 all this time? No fluctuating? Do you weigh every day? At this point, I do, but once I get back within my range, I think I will go to weekly as "the ride" is messing with my head. I will weigh more often after a splurge or an unusual meal or day and then cue in closer for a while, but that's it. I am too emotional of a person to start each day with the scale.

My family has certainly benefited from all I have learned about food, and I have pretty much nothing but healthy food in the house, but this kid can inhale 2 whole cartons of strawberries and still be hungry! Those same berries would last me all week. Now, they have their strawberries and I have mine. When theirs are gone, they're gone. A gal's gotta do what a gal's gotta do! ;)

LOL, if I don't want to share a special food in the fridge, all I have to do is put it just behind something else. Apparently at 56 years of age my husband doesn't realize the fridge is deeper than 1 item. :chin: That goes for the cupboards too. If it isn't right in front then it doesn't exist. He is constantly amazed at the stuff he sees me take out of the fridge because he never knew it was there. He just discovered the big Lindt 90% chocolate bar that's been in there for over a week (unopened), simply because I moved the 500g tub of Greek yogourt that was in front of it to another spot. He also didn't know we have 5 kinds of cheese in the cheese drawer. He opens it a little and grabs the cheddar (for every sandwich) never looking past it. :cheese:

My DH eats breakfast & supper IP maintenance style and lunch is whatever he wants - usually a meat, cheese, lettuce, tomato sandwich on 12 grain (sometimes a Reuben or Tuna & cheese or Egg salad.) He takes a mini Greek yogourt, a piece of fruit, and a granola or similar snack type bar, and a single serving size baggie of raw veg like baby carrots or celery sticks.

Liana

Originally Posted by SylviesGirl:
Wow, Ruth Ann, do you mean that you have been maintaining at exactly 135 all this time? No fluctuating? Do you weigh every day? At this point, I do, but once I get back within my range, I think I will go to weekly as "the ride" is messing with my head. I will weigh more often after a splurge or an unusual meal or day and then cue in closer for a while, but that's it. I am too emotional of a person to start each day with the scale.

My family has certainly benefited from all I have learned about food, and I have pretty much nothing but healthy food in the house, but this kid can inhale 2 whole cartons of strawberries and still be hungry! Those same berries would last me all week. Now, they have their strawberries and I have mine. When theirs are gone, they're gone. A gal's gotta do what a gal's gotta do! ;)

Sorry sylviesgirl - I wasn't very clear on that point! I've stayed at 135 on an average for the last couple of months - I do weigh myself every day but don't really count it and just count my weigh-ins with my coach which has had me at 135 the whole time except one week I went up to 136.2 or something (I have a habit of only looking at the first 3 numbers). I just do the daily weigh in out of curiosity. I'm thinking of switching to weekly weigh-ins at home just to see how I do.

That's funny about the strawberries! I watched my teenage nephew one time eat an entire bowl of oranges while we were talking. amazing what teenage boys can eat.

Hi everyone,

Ruth Ann- are your Weigh Ins with your coach free? Mine charges a maintenance fee. I have not weighed in at the clinic since "graduating" but still have 5 visits left. I think I am going to stop there today to check out the phase 4 cookbook.

Liana, my weight is staying at goal and I really have not had any cravings for my trigger foods. But...I am not sure that I could have a chocolate bar in the house for a week. More power to you :)

Sylvie, how are you? Feeling any better?

Do all of you have a free meal or day each week?

Slipfree - my coach doesn't charge for weigh ins. Once you pay the initial cost it's just the food & supplements. She's a pretty awesome coach.

Congrats on staying at goal!

Ruth Ann, your coach sounds great. I figure that I will save my visits for when I need the motivation of having to weigh in front of someone. Right now, sticking to protocol is not a struggle.

Thanks for the encouragement, always love your positive attitude.

My clinic is like that too. It is nice and once in a while I buy some food because I feel like they do such a great service and I can use it on days I need to lean out.

Hi All!

My coach also would see me anytime I needed it. When I did the 6-week reboot I saw her every week. I only paid for food. I, too, still buy a box of assorted foods every so often, just to keep them around if I need to do a P1 or P2 day.

I finally took the little 5-pound "sunnys" off of my signature. It's been over a year and I guess I can save the space. It was always so motivating to add another one each time I lost another 5 pounds. Ah well, let me admit that now I'm on the "life" track.

All is well with me. I'm enjoying the "lazy, crazy days of summer." Still at home for another week before I begin my annual pilgrimage to my homeland, NYC and other points in the US Northeast.

You are all doing so well! Congrats!

Originally Posted by joysh:
. . .Ah well, let me admit that now I'm on the "life" track.

That's a wonderful track to be on, Joysh!

Slip -- I had my first "free meal" on Saturday and am still not back to normal. Methinks it will be a while before another one. I'm still doing well, though. Even though I am a tad out of my range, I consider it a victory that I am right back OP and paying mind to getting back down there. In my past food-life, I would be eating my frustrations without focus or any mindfulness at all, really.

Liana -- You had me laughing about your husband's lack of knowledge about the food in your house. It was so familiar! My husband is the same way. Every single night, he comes to me and asks, "Do we have any ____? Is there any ____?" As if he would have no idea where to even look. Crazy . . . but it is good for me in that I don't have to worry about him depleting anything that I don't offer him. (My son, however, has some sort of freaky sonar for any and all food.)

Whomever wrote on here about peanut butter mixed into Greek yogurt -- you are so right, yum! Such a decadent-tasting treat.

You all had me smiling about husbands not finding things in the fridge. My husband is the same way! He never can find anything in the fridge or the freezer. I also put my food items in the back and they are not touched.

Sylviesgirl: I had 3 sons who had voracious appetites! That is a good sign of growth that you are back on track, even while being a tad bit out of range. The National Registry recommends a 3 percent range..which for me can be 4 pounds up or down. I love almond butter in yogurt. Yum.

Surprisingly, I did not gain anything from that meal. I got it from Maria Emmerich's Slow Cooker recipes. She offers a lot of creative low carb recipes. You can look at her web site. I usually eat the lower fat low carb versions of things to maintain. My next experiment from her cookbook is going to be Mexican tamale pie with coconut flour on the top.

Slipfree> my clinic is free. Even after two years, I can check in and get food or get weighed for free. It was helpful for me to weigh in frequently in my first year of maintenance.

Here is a good article on achievable weight vs maintainable weight. It helped me when I changed from 128 to 130 as my goal weight.


“Letting go doesn’t mean rejecting what is here. Rather it’s an attitude of letting things be without picking up what we don’t need.” James Baraz

Letting go is the theme of my Awakening Joy course this month. www.awakeningjoy.info It’s a profound theme and practice, in which James Baraz suggests we let go by simplifying, by letting go of the stories we tell ourselves, by being generous, and by letting go of expectations and excess. I know I have room to work on all of these aspects of my life, and am paying more attention to it each day.

In keeping with this theme, I realized something this morning. I think I've been at goal for years now but I've been fighting against accepting this weight since I was a teenager, and I’m finally ready to let go of that particular story.

I'm 5'4" barely, and somehow I have this idea in my head that the only way I'm successful is if I weight 120 or less. This summer when I got to 110 I was in heaven. I felt I'd arrived. I was finally skinny! But the truth was that my bones were sticking out, I had absolutely no fat anywhere, and I stopped getting my period for about 6 months. Further, I was eating in a way that was too restrictive for me to keep up as a lifestyle.

I’m now back up to about 128-130, depending on the day. The truth is that since high school, my body seems to come back to this weight of about 128 pounds, sometimes a bit more, sometimes a bit less. And then I diet my way down to 120-ish, get excited and scared, and gain it all back plus. Then I start over. That's how it's been for over 30 years of my life.

I just finished re-reading the Beck Diet Solution (great book, highly recommend) www.amazon.com/The-Beck-
Diet-Solution-Person/dp/B0
01NXDRJO and in the very end she has a great chapter in which she explains when a person is ready for maintenance. I found it very eye-opening to reread this chapter, particularly because in my own handwriting, I saw that the last time I read this chapter, last year, I was in the same place - I had wanted to weigh 120 but then gained back up to about 128-130.

Here is Judith Beck’s take (from her blog (I also highly recommend, you can get her free newsletter there) at www.beckdietsolution.co
m/diet-solution-blog/ ):
“[the] concept of ‘ideal weight’ – it’s the weight that you get down to when you’re eating and exercising in a healthy way that you can maintain. Now this weight may not the weight of your thinnest friend, it may not be the weight you were at in college, and it almost definitely isn’t the weight of the celebrities we see on television. In our minds, your ideal weight is the weight that you can get down to and stay at, not the weight that you can get down to, then gain some weight back, then work on losing it again, then gaining it back again. We just don’t believe that it’s worth getting down to a weight that you ultimately can’t maintain (by either exercising or eating in a way that is not sustainable) because you’ll just gain it back and then feel very discouraged.”

My note:

This is exactly what I’ve been experiencing. Though I can get to 120 or less when I’m obsessively focused on it, it’s not sustainable because it takes too much restriction.

She then goes on to say, “It’s also important to know that most people, when they lose weight, get down to what we call their lowest achievable weight. However, most people don’t stay there! They eventually end up relaxing their habits just a bit and gaining a few pounds back and end up leveling off at we call their lowest maintainable weight. Their lowest achievable weight is probably not their lowest maintainable weight because it would require intense focus on their eating and exercise.”

My note:

Yes, when I’m at 120, I have to focus intensely. I’ve was there when I got married, and for a few weeks each year, but never for a long period of time. I’ve never been able to maintain it.

Finally Beck gives very practical ways to learn to accept ourselves at this lowest maintainable weight, which for me, isn’t the weight I’ve been telling myself I should weigh:

She says, “… you [don’t] have to be at all unhappy with where you are now. In fact, you should be extremely proud of yourself for the weight you did lose and for all of the hard work and dedication you put into it. Instead of focusing on the 10 pounds you didn’t lose, think instead about all of the weight you did lose. Even if you’re not quite at the weight you wanted to get down to starting out, think about…Do you feel better about yourself?...”

She continues, “You can also ask yourself: How would my life really be different if I lost another 10 pounds? Would the differences be so significant? Is it possible that I’m already experiencing many of the things I wanted to achieve, even though the number on the scale isn’t what I initially had in mind? It sounds like it may be worth working on changing your concept of your own ideal weight, feeling proud about where you are, and move forward appreciating all the wonderful changes that have come about as a result of losing weight."

My note:

So here I am. I'm not at my lowest desirable or achievable weight, but I think I'm at about my lowest maintainable weight. And in my core, I know that if I could just accept myself at this weight, life would be so much easier. I've been at 120 and my life really wasn't all that different. Yes, I wore a smaller size, but that's about all. When I think about it, during those brief weeks at 120, I was also quite stressed about regaining, very uptight and anxious about any social plans, irritable because I was hungry all the time, and then plagued by months of binging, starving, regaining, and self-loathing.

When I let go of this story, I can see that I live a very healthy lifestyle and have since I was about 20. In fact, I love living this healthy lifestyle and all of the things I'm listing below come quite easily to me:

1. I workout daily.
2. I track my food.
3. I weigh myself each morning.
4. I drink a ton of water.
5. I weigh and measure my foods.
6. I eat most meals seated, slowly and mindfully.
7. I keep within a set calorie range for the most part.
8. Most importantly, I actually LOVE healthy foods. I don't eat sugar (gave it up completely 9 years ago when I had my daughter), adore all veggies and eat them with abandon, and prefer home cooked meals.

I also think that over time, maybe very slowly, my numbers might come down a bit, because this would be the FIRST time in my life that I'm accepting myself at this weight and saying, "I'm OK now". Further, because there is no more binging (day 12, hooray!!!!) and my body hasn't ever experienced this kind of consistency, I have this feeling that over time my body will settle in, perhaps around 125, which would be great. But if not, I know I'm OK at this weight. I'm not fat at all. I may not be skinny, not as skinny as my fantasies, not as skinny as some of my friends or my mom or some of the amazing people who are my height, but I'm fit and pretty slender.

I think I’m finally ready to let go…

Maile -- thank you SO MUCH for posting this. It means a lot coming from you who has been a model for maintenance success for all of us. I am not a maintainer yet, but I read this thread for inspiration and to keep why I am doing this in sight. I have been struggling lately with "what is the ideal goal?" I'm thinking of extending my initial goal, but having never been at that "lowest achievable weight" I am not quite sure what to be aiming for. I suspect that my dream weight might not be totally realistic and am preparing myself mentally to accept a weight that I have had negative connotations with (for admittedly silly reasons) but in reality is completely fine and healthy. It's a comfort to know that it's almost an on going experiment and learning process. Thank you again.

Maile -- I don't think I can thank you enough for that post. I think that is exactly my next challenge -- finding and accepting a "lowest maintainable weight." That requires trust. Trust in myself, trust in my body. That is a HUGE issue for me. The articles you posted, along with your generous personal narrative, puts this sharply into focus for me. I have some thinking to do. I may be gripping too tightly to a certain number and not allowing for the concept that my body may settle on a slightly different number and that might just be okay. These are all things for me to "throw into the stew" as I find my way in maintenance rather than just focusing single-mindedly on a certain number.

I was just telling my husband this morning -- since I am up 2 lbs this morning due to tomato sauce last night -- that it is as if all the weight I lost means nothing compared to these 5 lbs. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water. I need to step back and look at the big picture. If I am eating OP and living healthfully, that is the most important thing now and the thing from which I should derive the most satisfaction.

As usual, thanks Maile.

Maile,

P1 girl here lurking on this thread and exactly for a post like what you just discussed!!!! Sometimes I find myself still only focusing on my flaws as I near my goal weight. Craziness. I am now in the "normal weight" BMI category - and that was my goal to begin with: back to health! But then sometimes I look at my goal weight, which I believe to be a healthy and maintainable weight for myself, and I wonder if I should try to go lower.

Reading your article helps me to see that 135 is an excellent place for me to move on to the next phase. I have weighed significantly less, but those were never sustainable weights for me, even with healthy diet and exercise.

"I do not need to eliminate all body fat from my figure"...this needs to be my new mantra. I have curves and like my curves. I need to follow my own advice I give to my clients to spend more time looking and focusing on the the things I love about myself (both inside and out) instead of all my time focusing on my perceived flaws.

My scale broke so waiting patiently for next week and my official weigh in at my clinic....fingers crossed that I will really getting close to moving to P2 and hopefully joining you ladies in the not-too-distant future!