I have spent the past few days reading all the threads in this forum. As of Saturday I made my goal of 155 pounds. As I stated in a previous thread I started out at 312 pounds on March 10th of last year and wanted to get to half of my weight within a year. Ok so I have done it. I am at that magical number, and now I am scared out of my mind.

I know that many of you will say go back and read such and such a thread. Believe me I have. I am sorry if I am rehashing anything that someone else may have asked or posted previously, but I just needed to vent I think.

I am scared because now I have to maintain. Ok, I know maintaining is basically the same as dieting. Except I have been living on a very very low calorie diet for this past year. I know I need to add some calories so I don't keep on losing. But I am so afraid to add one single calorie. I am so afraid of stepping on that scale ans seeing even one pound gained. I feel like I am fragile and could easily go off the deep end and start eating like I did before, even though I know the odds of this are slim.

I thought ok, I will add one extra meal a day each week and monitor it and make sure it doesn't cause me to gain. But even that scares me. I have become such a creature of habit in this past year that I don't like the idea of deviating. I eat very clean and will continue to do so, so the meals I add will be healthy meals, but still they will be additional calories and in my sick and twisted mind I fear I will wake up one day and be 312 again. I can never go back to that person I was.

Everyone keeps telling me that I won't because I have spent a year doing this and have changed everything in my life and have integrated exercise (which I now love) and that I am stronger then I realize I am. This may all be true, but inside of me I am terrified. Is it normal to feel like this? I have no point of reference for any of this (having been fat ALL my adult life).

I am also afraid that I won't be able to let go of this mentality and will keep on losing until I am nothing more then skin and bones and a hank of hair (which some say I am now). So I am afraid of gaining weight AND afraid of losing. Crazy.

How do you get your head around all of this and start having a healthy relationship with food? Will the weeks and months ahead help me to "lighten up" and cut myself some slack and just get on with living and lose the obsession? I had thought that once I hit that magic number that all my troubles would be solved. I would be thin and happy and able to eat what I wanted. Instead I stand here scared and feeling alien in my own body and finding myself thinking back warmly to those days and nights I would soothe myself with my friend food.

I think the real journey (as many of you have said) is just beginning for me.

Thanks for listening.

I had very very similar feelings when I started maintaining. In my life, I had lost sizeable amounts of weight on 2 different occasions and had never been able to keep it off. I had lost weight before, I had never kept the weight off.

The statistics just rolled around in my head - the huge percentage of people who gained the weight back. I did not want to be a statistic. I loved my thinner, healthier self. I wanted to stay that way!!!

I had been eating around 1400-1600 calories. I increased calories in tiny little baby steps. I still counted calories, still food journaled, still planned my healthy meals, packed my snacks, my lunches. I just added 100 more calories every day, up to 1700. After about a month, I added another 100 calories a day to 1800. It was scary and liberating - it felt wonderfully decadent to have 200 extra calories a day.

Even more terrifying - I started to look at "treats" and splitting desserts at restaurants with friends. After banishing sugar and vanquishing my sugar addiction, it was positively petrifying to disturb the sleeping sugar monster.

It has been a very long process with days when I went back to eating a "safe" 1600 calories. I love food though, I love eating and I really started ENJOYING the extra calories every day. I eventually reached around 2000 calories a day - still eating very clean

The best news - I didn't gain back one pound. I reached my maintenance weight of 140 in March of 2005. It has been one year - I actually weigh 127 lbs. I lost MORE weight after I started eating MORE. Amazing stuff

Currently, I am ecstatically happy with my weight and my eating. I probably think about food (planning, packing, shopping) more than a "normal" person, but eating healthy makes me happy. I still have weird thoughts about treats but I no longer feel compelled to binge on sugar.

In June, I got a tattoo to celebrate my weight loss. It is a Chinese proverb (4 traditional chinese characters on my back) that translates to "Dripping water can eat through stone." It's to remind me of perseverance - all the little changes I make every day to stay this healthy.

You can do it! You have reached your goal weight, it's time to slowly increase your calories over a period of weeks/months and keep up the weekly weighings until you find the spot where you no longer lose weight and you don't gain weight. If you find it hard to eat "more" food, try eating small amounts of nutritious, calorie-rich food like nuts or avocados.

If you're interested, here is my journal over on Shape that I started the day I decided that my 12 week plateau at 140 was actually maintenance. It's where I keep my food journal and there is a lot of writing about the difficulties of eating more and struggles to have a "normal" relationship with food.

http://boards.shape.com/ib/ikonboard...3;t=95261;st=0

Glory...

Thanks so much for your reply. I will definately check out your journal.

My main problem is I have this fear that since I have been on such a restrictive calorie diet for so long, that as soon as I add extra food I am going to just pack on the pounds. Logically I know this is untrue, but the mind is not always logical.

Then I have those odd moments when I say to myself, hey...if I happen to gain a pound or so, no big deal, I can just go back to restrictive calorie intake and lose it. But that thought doesn't linger long. Because after a year of doing this (and not cheating once in that whole year) a gain is a failure.

Boy, I can think back to my first goal. It was to get to 190, because 190 was what my drivers license has said for like a zillion years (even when I was 312). Then I changed the goal to 180...just let me get to 180 and I will stop. Well 180 came and went and then I made it 170. And on and on. As my family keeps saying "You keep changing your goal". Well..thats what your supposed to do right? Get to goal and re-evaluate and then go forward. They think I am being obssessive. Maybe I am. I do know that I also think about food WAY more then the average person. My friends tease me about it, but they have no idea what an ordeal it is.

Again thanks for replying. It helps to know some of these things I am feeling are normal.

Oh, I think most of us in maintenance mode can understand your reluctance to add calories. You don't want to be "back there" (ie obese), again...ever. It's great that you're even thinking of the implications of this, because it's easy to have the weight creep back on unless you're vigilant about your food intake. I found it helpful to add 100 calories at a time, and tell myself that it would make exercise and my new active lifestyle easier (and it did). Good luck and congratulations on your weight loss.

Dear Craicgirl,

I understand your fears, but let me ask you: did you never, ever, bounce up and down in your weight loss journey? Did you never step on the scale only to find it had gone up overnight, despite days of clean eating and solid exercise? If that never happened to you, you're one lucky chickie. But if it did, think back to how you coped. And cope you did, because you've met your goal. And what an accomplishment: you lost half your body weight. I'd say you've got strength, guts, conviction, determination and will power by the bucketfull.

You're awesome blossom.

So feel free to vent. And then remember this: Life on maintenance is up and down. Up and down. Up and down. Bodies fluctuate. They do it all by themselves and they do it whether you're looking or not. I think you have to come to grips with the fact that a gain is *not* a failure; it may not even be a problem. It may be water. It may be post-workout muscle swelling. It may be medication. It may be a salty slice of pizza. And it may go away the next day all by itself.

You're right: the next stage of the journey is just beginning. But you've got company. Welcome to the ranks!

I added calories back in very slowly as well. I think it was probably easier for me though because I never cut my calories drastically. I took the weight off a lot slower than you did so the difference in calories between losing and maintenance was not so great. Even though, I found it nerve wracking. It gets better though

Thanks everyone for your responses. They have really helped.

Today when I went in to shower for work, as I came out of the shower I caught sight of myself in the mirror and I was actually shocked. I could see my ribs in my back and bones sticking out all over. I dressed and came out and said that I was starting to look like an ethiopian child. Surely soon they will be having a telethon for me. I looked so thin. I went right to the fridge and grabbed the cottage cheese (fat free of course) and the Natural Peanut Butter and some fat free cool whip and started eating. Luckily I only had like 10 minutes before I needed to leave for work, so my little mini binge was cut short. But I was freaking thinking I need to eat, I am too thin.

I don't know if this is just from what I have been hearing from people lately or if it's as a co-worker of mine said tonight, that I am just not used to seeing my bones. Tonight my S.O. said (when I showed my very promenant collar bones) that some people just have promenant bones. Maybe I am one of those people...maybe I am not turning into skin and bones and a hank of hair.

Well either way I have decided that next week I will be adding a meal a day each week and monitoring it. I want to start building muscle so I know I need to start eating more in order to do this. I will just have to put my fear behind me and take it one day at a time as they say.

Wish me luck.