3 Fat Chicks on a Diet Weight Loss Community - New Member with 4 years of Maintenance

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- Living Maintenance (https://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/living-maintenance-170/)

- - New Member with 4 years of Maintenance (https://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/living-maintenance/186990-new-member-4-years-maintenance.html)

New Member with 4 years of Maintenance

I am pleased to have found this forum.
I've joined, posted an Introduction, :angel:
and now I'm so looking forward to reading all the "Sticky" posts located here.
I hope to soon get acquainted with some of you.

Hey there, and :wel3fc:

So glad you found the Maintainers! I can't wait to get to know you better.

:bravo: on 4 years! Join us in the chat or accountability threads.

Hi there! Welcome to 3FC and to the Maintainers Forum! :)

Congrats on 4 years! Looking forward to getting to know you!

Quote:

Originally Posted by mandalinn82 (Post 3024204)

Join us in the chat or accountability threads.

Thanks, I look forward to it.:hug:

Welcome and congratulations on maintaining for four years !

Hi Angel, and welcome! I'm glad that you've joined us. :welcome2:

Hey welcome and I am glad you are here. I would love to hear your story of weightloss and most importantly MAINTENANCE! Holler back.

4 years of maintenance is exciting, welcome :D

Welcome!!! :welcome:

Welcome and Bravo on 4 years of maintenance Angel!(darn smilies are taking too long to load)

Dagmar :cool:

Thank you for your Posts of Welcome.
I am in the process of reading the Introduction Thread, and hope to get to know each of you.
I am so excited to have found so many people who: are Maintaining their Weight-Losses;
have experiences similiar to mine; and seem to share similiar beliefs re Maintenance.

To make it easy to find, a copy of my Introduction Post follows,
Hope that's okay.

Quote:

For the past 4 years I have been working to maintain within my Goal Weight Maintenance Range, which is between 115-105 lbs. :angel:

I developed a weight-problem at puberty...which for me was age 9.
I am now over 60 years old.
During my lifetime, I've lost 100+ lbs four separate times and regained it 3 times.
I've been on almost every diet and belonged to most diet-clubs.
I spent 5 very active years in Overeaters Anonymous.
I spent 20 years in therapy addressing this (as well as other) issues.
I spent time in an outpatient eating disorders hospital program dealing with binge eating.

17 years ago, after the OA, the therapy, and the eating disorders program, I had a gastric bypass,
which did not remove any intestine so that every calorie I eat is still absorbed.
At that time I weighed 271 lbs. I lost to 160 lbs,
maintained there for several years and then began to regain weight.

At 190 lbs in September 2004, I began using a food journaling program, Diet Power,
to log every bite of food I took, and began, on my own, working to eat approximately
1000 to 1200 calories per day with a daily calorie average of around 1250.
After an average weight loss of about 1 lb per week for a 16 month period
I reached my goal of 115 lbs.
Since then, I've been working to maintain in a range near that number.
I still log all of my food into my software journal every day,
and work to keep my calorie averages low enough to maintain my goal weight.

My Height is 5'0", and I'm over 60, so maintaining a light weight has not been an easy task.
I am in excellent health, and take no medication.

I now have extensive personal data records which are contained in my software program.
They show that during the past 4 years of maintenance, my calorie burn has dropped lower every year.
This is despite the fact that I do frequent and consistent low-impact exercise.
The first maintenance year, 2006, I was burning a daily average of around 1400 calories.
In 2008, that daily average burn went down to around 1250 calories.
In 2009, that daily average burn went down to around 1080 calories. :censored:
I see no basis for this, and I'm hoping it is a temporary phenomenon.
Even so, I am determined to continue to maintain my current size and weight.

Bright Angel, thanks for the intro!

How is it that your program tells you your "calorie burn"? What does that number represent? I haven't seen that in other tracking programs.

Congratulations on meeting your goal and staying with your goal weight.

:cheer2: :cheer2:

Jay

Quote:

Originally Posted by JayEll (Post 3025107)

Bright Angel,
How is it that your program tells you your "calorie burn"? What does that number represent? I haven't seen that in other tracking programs.

Congratulations on meeting your goal and staying with your goal weight.

Thanks, Jay
The software program use is called "DietPower".
I've consistently posted all of my food intake into it every day since 9/20/04.
and it tells me that "0 out of 1893 days has missing data".

It has a lot of functions that I like, such as the ability to add new foods to the dictionary via input of label info; the ability to input all my own recipes so that I know the calories and nutritional values of each serving; graphs of my weight and calorie history; etc.

It also has a "metabolism function", which is:
It starts with the Harris/Benedict formula plus a light activity percentage level,
then after 30 days of use, it does a math equation of the difference between the calories of one's ACTUAL food input, and one's ACTUAL weight input, and uses that as one's "Metabolism rate".

Over time, this can be helpful, however, it is slow to respond accurately to changes, and I, personally, cannot rely upon those numbers. This is Important to Note, because the program also has a plan where it will "Set" one's calorie "Budget" and tell one how many calories to eat in order to reach a specific goal at a specific time.

Personally, I always use the program's option to set my own "calorie budget" as I find the program's "calorie budget" function inaccurate for my body, as it can't distinguish between fat lbs and salt/water/waste lbs, and also my body doesn't immediately respond to food-intake = weight-change, the way the program's math wants it to.
If you are interested, a free online trial is available from Dietpower.

However, I frequently use the term "calorie burn" to mean my daily calories averaged out over time, measured together with my weight loss/gain averaged out over time, (time such as a quarter or a year) It's easy to do this with my personal food and weight data that my software program has collected and stored.

Anyway, since I have been keeping detailed records for such a long time...to date 1893 days....I have an enormous amount of personal food and weight data. In fact, I could go back to any past Thanksgiving Day (or any day after 9/20/2004), including 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and tell you exactly what and how much food I ate that day. Perhaps no one else would ever be interested in this, but using it really brings home to me the fact that I AM ACCOUNTABLE for every single day I live. There is no...."I blew it, I'll start again tomorrow", or "I'll start on Monday" or "I'm on Vacation". Every choice I make, every meal, every bite, every day is part of my life and my body. I think this, above all else, is why I've been able to Maintain in my Weight-Goal Range for the past 4 years....and why, there' is a good chance that I'll be able to do so for the rest of my life.

Dedicated, not Obsessed

Anyone who has read my post above, will probably understand
why I SO LOVE the statement that Meg made in one of the sticky threads at the top of this section.
I recall it as:
"Obsessed is what the weak and lazy call the dedicated." :val1: