Luminous - as soon as you lose 1 lb you are a maintainer. You never want to gain that 1 lb back. I know that if I had started thinking about maintenance earlier in previous weight loss attempts, I actually might have maintained

I actually don't like the term maintenance at all, because weight is never static. I think of myself as actively managing my weight, and prefer the term weight management, which doesn't place an artificial distinction between losing weight and maintaining.

Anne

Anne - I love it - weight management! Much nicer. Just that sometimes I manage better than others.

Pat, management is indeed a day-to-day thing!

Anne

Make that hour to hour.

Anyone for minute to minute???

I guess I can't argue that.

Minute to minute? No arguments here as well. *sigh*

Light-bulb moment. Somehow, I was always feeling like some sort of fraud, posting here when I'm not at my professed goal yet... but drats, you're right! I'm already doing my best to envision what I do like a lifestyle and not a diet, so why not worry about maintenance NOW rather than wait until the end and then find myself clueless.? It kind of contradicts my 'philosophy'! So I guess you're definitely stuck with me then, because what's for sure is that even if I were to never lose those last 10 lbs, I'd still do what it takes to maintain to where I am now.

I feel the same way, Kery! While I've pretty much maintained a 30 pound loss for over a year now, I'm still working on losing those last 10 pounds.

Exactly right. Maintenance starts on Day One of your diet/lifestyle change. That's why everyone - regardless of where they are and where they want to end up in their weight loss journey - is part of Maintainers and welcome to post here.

Losing weight is the warm-up; it's the easy part. We've all done it a hundred times, right? Keeping it off forever is the rest of the story. Every single pound we lose is precious and we want to keep it off -- forever. Who cares how long it takes to get to your goal? That's not what's important. Never, ever, ever gaining it back is the only thing that counts in the end.

While I agree strongly with the main idea here, for me, weight loss/not ever gaining back a single pound is not my goal. The goal for me is a consistent healthy lifestyle. Now, that will mean that my body will lose weight and maintain a healthier weight, but that is only a side effect and a usually good (but not perfect) metric for whether I am being honest with myself about my lifestyle.

To have a healthy lifestyle I have to consciously choose the right amounts of food day-to-day (choosing healthy kinds of food was never much of a problem for me, I really can do that part almost unconsciously, I'm very lucky in that) and exercise. When I do this, if my body is above its healthy weight it will lose weight, if it is below, it will gain, and if it is at a healthy weight it will maintain. Thus I also fall into the there is no difference between the weight loss phase and maintenance camp.

Not even caloric intake?

My maintenance looks nearly exactly like my weight loss, with the exception of more calories per day, the addition of 1 weekly treat meal and the occasional glass of red wine.

Not necessarily. Generally speaking, a heavier body requires more calories to maintain its weight and it requires more calories to do the same exercises than a lighter weight body does. (Although LBM is the primary consumer of at-rest calories, it's not the only consumer -- and hauling a 200 lb body up a hill (or even just out of bed) takes more calories than a 120lb body, whether or not those lbs are muscle or fat).

Thus, if you consume maintenance level calories and do maintenance level exercise and are above maintenance weight, you will lose weight -- although, very, very slowly if you are near maintenance weight. Because most people aren't happy with a such a slow rate of weight loss, they choose to eat less than maintenance levels and then increase calories when they hit maintenance weight. This, however, is not required (but is hard to do -- everyone's body is different and changes as we age, acquire health conditions, etc, so it's difficult to know exactly what the maintenance level is if you're not there), you could live a 'maintenance' lifestyle from day 1 and your body will eventually get there.

That said, do I sometimes choose to eat less than what maintenance is when I weigh more so that I get even faster weight loss? Yeah. I'm human. Also, since determining exact maintenance level is hard (or impossible since it is a moving target), doing so makes it take less time to get feedback on whether the calorie level is in an appropriate range.

Actually, there is one big exception: if one is very overweight, the body's calorie needs could be so high just to perform daily living tasks, that eating at maintenance level calories would be too low to be healthful without medical supervision. In that case, a slow decrease over time to maintenance level calories as one loses weight is advised.

I think I agree with that last part....although I think it is very hard for most people to do. Not just because of the speed of weight loss, but I think for most people it is almost necessary to shake things up and change things so radically to be able to make a permanent change.

I think what is hard about management is that it is such a learning process and we dont get it right every single time. If you have pounds to lose it is easier to be radical and have a margin for error. But the bigger you make the margin, the more there is a drive, either from hunger, or denial or whatever to compensate.

Not to pick on Glory here but I was reading your thing about the donut in the other thread. At a rational level we all know that a donut (and not even a whole one) or a slice of pizza doesnt make us failures or ruin everything, but it is so much EASIER to say "no donuts ever" then to learn to beat our demons back. Because donuts have come to REPRESENT something more than what they are.

I think that is at some level why this time around I have been almost MAKING myself eat some amount of "forbidden foods" regularly. Pizza, chocolate and ice cream to be specific. Because I want so desperately to be able to treat ALL food as just food. Some is better than others but none of it should control ME.