almost three weeks into maintenance now and i am hitting my head hard against an increasingly thick wall.

imagine this: you're on a diet, it's the evening, you feel peckish but you tell yourself--shuttup, you're losing weight. it helps.

now, on maintenance, i keep fighting with my inner demon that says to me "you feel peckish, you can maintain tomorrow, or you can do a deficit tomorrow to balance out if the scale in the morning isn't fine, don't worry, the hard job is done"

i keep trying to ignore this voice but it gets stronger! i have a lot of willpower and i have been able to resist.

the ridiculus part is that i am not craving anything unhealthy but i would LOVE some low-fat philadelphia cheese on wholegrain melba toast right NOW.

which adds to the demon-voice's power.

ideas/thoughts/tips.

the good side is that 3 weeks in and maintenance looks succesful- well, except this little problem.

love

grrrkgrrrl

No ideas but just to say you're doing so well beating down that voice. Tell it that you don't eat just before bedtime!

BTW, have you read the Grk books? (Children's books about a great dog.)

Good luck!

Just keep 'Battling' the Voices! Congratulations on making your Goal!

How do you track what you eat in maintenance? Have you allowed for an evening snack? Or do you not want to snack in the evening just on general principles?

If you're getting enough to eat during the day, then peckish isn't hunger and you can continue to battle that voice. If you're short of food by evening, then you may actually be hungry, and there may not be any harm in having a controlled snack.

The danger is that it becomes every evening, or becomes more than "one" snack, or becomes high calorie.

Don't allow any excuses about tomorrow to make up your mind, no matter what!

Jay

i have been generally allowing for something to eat in the evening- controlled- but some days it feels like it isn't enough.. i have my dinner at 6pm (i cannot have it any later usually) and then have another snack at 9ish.. but i wanted some stir fry tonight and a whole chicken breast to go with it so i decided to "sacrifice" my snack for it, only it hasn't been working.

argh

it's my official weight day tomorrow and i'll see how it's gonna go, but i might be undereating even in maintenance.. we'll see.

thanks for the food for though


@silverbirch, no i haven't read those books, but i assume my nickname's reminded you of them?

grrrkgrrrl

I recommend the Beck book for those inner voices.

Usually they are wrong, and the reason you get them is that you feel you have earned something for keeping on track "I was a good girl so n ow I should be able to have that snack" That still does not mean that the snack is caloriefree. Also, in the evening you are less occupied with other things, which contributes.

Keep holding out, and you'll see that every day that you do not cave it gets easier. In a couple of days its easier, in 3 weeks it is a habit. And drink a cup of tea (without sugar) instead if you want the snack.

Good luck,
Rabbit

Beck (Judith Beck, The Beck Diet Solution) calls these voices 'sabotaging thoughts'. She recommends countering them with a helpful response. For example,

ST: I deserve to be able to eat what I want.
HR: If I want all the benefits of being thinner, I just can't eat whatever I want without planning. I have to make "I deserve to be thinner & feel good about myself" a much higher priority than "I deserve to make spontaneous choices about what I eat".

It's a cognitive behavioural therapy book rather than an eating plan. Are you in the Smoke somewhere? Bet one of the big bookshops would have it if you wanted to look.
I got mine on Amazon and am losing well with it.

i managed to not have a snack last night, and was well proud of it today.

weight was at 66.1 so it looks like everything was on par for this week.



they were sabotaging thoughts, that's exactly how i would've defined them as well. hopefully it'll become easier with time but i know for sure that i am very determined to keep this maintenance for life so i need to learn to live with it!

xxx grrrkgrrrl

I'm in month 8 of maintenance and one of the things I have continued to very closely monitor is evening "over snacking". After 7pm weekdays and 8pm weekends the only thing I can eat after those times are raw veggies or fruit. Nothing else. There have been only 2 times in the last 2 years I didn't follow my rule, and it was awful. I didn't sleep very well and woke up the next day bloated and puffy (Christmas 2008 and Thanksgiving 2009)

If I start back on that terrible habit, I'm pretty certain I will begin to gain weight. Though I do save the majority of my calories (around 800) for my evening meal and that REALLY helps. If I overindulge at lunch and have to really cut back at supper, it is super hard to fight the urge. I make sure I ALWAYS have a big bag of veggies wash and cut up in the fridge for these situations.

I have always been very snacky in the evenings. I don't really see anything wrong with it, as long as you can save the calories. For a while, actually, I was depriving myself of nighttime snacking, mostly just for the fact that it might affect my weigh in results the next morning, and this would lead to feelings of deprivation and sometimes under-eating and it would eventually backfire. So snacking works for me, and being in maintenance allows for a little more sometimes if I am feeling extra snacky!

These all have to be carefully measured out though, and I try to actually sit down and enjoy the "snack," and it turns into more of a small meal than a snack. A meal composed of snacky type, good-for-me foods.

i, too, have the majority of my kcals after 6pm usually. for some reason, i am FINE for the whole day but after 6pm i need to feel full and satisfied or i cannot sleep/relax. usually i have 800kcals dinner WITH a snack afterwards, and i remember one time i had a 900 kcal dinner!

another time i had a 700kcal dinner with a 300kcal snack 2 hours later!

all these i have mentioned were of course planned and accounted for, but it shows me my body prefers to eat at night versus during the day.
why would that be? is it something that's learned or is it just different body-types?

i also never used to eat breakfast and i was fine hunger-wise until 2pm! but since i started my diet plan i was forcing myself to have breakfast and now i actually wake up hungry (which makes me happy).

It's cortisol. I don't know what your work day is like, but if you are running on stress all day, then your adrenaline levels are high, and so are your cortisol levels. Adrenaline tells you (via the body), "Don't eat so much, we may have to run for our lives any minute!" So you don't feel very hungry during the day. Once you get off work, your adrenaline levels drop, but the cortisol is still there. Cortisol tells you, "Gosh, I'm so hungry! I think I need a LOT more food!" And so at night when you have only cortisol to deal with, you feel hungry.

Cortisol is also one of the causes of belly fat deposition.

So, I think part of the lifestyle change has to be reducing stress levels in general.

Jay

jesus, i didn't think i was running on a constant fight or flight response! i never thought about it that way but you're probably right, trying to manage work and an Msc gets quite harsh. :/