Oh Carol -- I STILL have the same problems! I still worry about gaining the weight back and I still weigh myself every day.
But I think that you can use those two things to your advantage and that time helps you put it all in perspective. You'll be able to relax and ease up a bit as you live maintenance. I really do understand that panicked feeling that you get once you hit goal because it's like: "now what? I worked hard and got to where I want to be but ... how do I stay here?"
I mentally struggled for the first three months of maintencance -- I'd eat a treat and then freak out and think that I'd wake up 20 pounds heavier the next day ...
I was really obsessing over little gains on the scale and not sure what to do to keep the weight off. What I learned is that I just need to keep doing what I did to lose the weight (at least most of the time) and the weight stays off just fine. There's a little more room for leeway (and since you're doing WW, you get extra points, right?) but it's not all that different from whatever you did to get to goal. Especially with regard to exercise!
In "Thin For Life", one of the habits of maintainers that's discussed is constantly monitoring their weight and taking action before a little gain gets to be a big one. So I'm not going to tell you not to weigh yourself
. Now that you're at goal, it's important for you to learn how the food you eat and how much you exercise affects your weight maintenance. But perhaps twice a day is a little too often?
I've come to accept the fact that I'm going to weigh myself every morning unless someone comes and rips the scales out of my bathroom. But no more than once a day -- I do try to limit it to that!
What it's shown me is that, yes, the scale will invariably go up after I eat more than usual, especially sweets and/or carbs. But -- once I get right back to my usual routine of eating and exercise, the scale will go back down.
Use that fear of gaining the weight back to keep you focused on maintenance. Not to the point of letting it drive you nuts, of course, but just enough to always keep you on your toes. We can't really afford to slack off very much, I don't think -- it's when you take a day or week or (horrors!) a month off that you run into problems. And it's so much easier to make this a way of life than to be quitting and re-starting and stopping and starting over all the time.
After a while, it all becomes second nature -- just part of your life. You'll gain confidence that you'll be able to keep the weight off just by living maintenance, day by day. Now that it's been two years for me, I know that the only way I'll ever gain the weight back is if I allow myself to gain it through deliberate bad choices -- it's not going to sneak up on me while I'm sleeping! No one and nothing but me can make me fat again -- and I'm not going to do that! And I know that you aren't going to do that either!
I am obsessed with the scales!
) . Really puts the thing into perspective for me.
