I've been lurking around here a lot, feeding off the knowledge of you successful long-term maintainers. It's very insightful and a bit nerve-wracking for this newbie maintainer to see the challenges I'm likely going to face.

I've been trying to explore why people regain weight in the hopes of seeing the signs in myself. I mean right now I'm 23, living at home and struggling to make it as a "life newbie" in a crappy job market. I'm going to have a new set of challenges in every stage of my life. When I get married and live off on my own I don't want to gain weight (although I figure since I'll control the food it might get easier...), when I have children I don't want to gain a significant amount of pounds and as those children grow I'll have to learn to make time for myself.

I don't know if I'm in the right headspace to be a long-term maintainer eventually. I'm hoping I am because I worked hard to get here and I don't think I could just fall over and go back to my old ways.

This really struck a cord with me because I did this back when I added exercise in my routine, but long before I started the significant portion of my weight loss. When I got a job in a drugstore when I was 18, I made sure I was unavailable certain days so I could go to the gym. When I worked on campus during undergrad and grab school, I tailored my work schedule around the classes at the gym.

My fiance knows that I cannot stay out late on Saturdays so I can go to my advanced spin class Sunday morning. There are also days I simply don't hang out with my friends because there is a class at the gym. I get lots of "oh you can miss your class!" but I ignore them and suggest another day.

I don't know if it's really depressing, but I guess there are certain sacrifices to be made with this lifestyle. I don't even think twice about it now.

Hey Mudpie,

I don't think I was saying people need to be happy all the time--any more than they need to be miserable all the time. But if someone wakes up every day and their first thoughts are worries about how are they going to control their weight that day, well, I think that's not the best way to live. I'm merely making a comparison between two ways of viewing life in maintenance.

I also think that comments about whether MLK Jr. had a major goal to be happy every day are sort of off the mark. Certainly he had different goals than that--but I'm sure that his major goals did not include maintaining the reading on his bathroom scale... I guess I am advocating a sense of balance and perspective here! One's scale weight is not the most important thing in life.

It's interesting that home bathroom scales weren't even available until the 1940s. Must have been terrible for those folks not to be able to fret or cheer over 2 pounds difference from 1 week to the next...

Jay

What a great point! As a person who came to Christ during my adult life, the idea of the ultimate goal being personal happiness on this earth is one that I no longer subscribe to. It's not like I'm trying to live a life of misery either, but there are some things that are more important than happiness (I think that this is a idea that is not received well in our society, i.e., the U.S.). I'm not saying weight loss is one of them, but perhaps it goes hand-in-hand. I mean, I have oftentimes felt as if my happiness was a catch-22 situation: When I was fat and eating as much of everything I want, as often as I wanted, I was happy to be in that blissful food utopia, but then I would be miserable when I had to go to a function and find something to wear or when I couldn't fit into anything or when I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror (& when I eventually started purposely avoiding mirrors). Add to that some health repercussions as I've gotten older (e.g., getting winded while climbing stairs, snoring more because of increased weight on my chest area, etc.). Then, in past times, when I would diet, I would be happy that those vanity issues would disappear, but unhappy that I had to regulate my food. Now, I seem to be more at peace with the latter---maybe because I'm just more realistic and realize that I really cannot have it all.

Sorry to digress, but your point was so insightful that I wanted to comment on it .

I studied journalism back in the stone age and I keep thinking I'm making clear points when I write/post. It's really cool to have people able to respond so I can see that I need to work a lot more on communicating clearly.

I think I should rephrase some posts I'm replying to in my own words and ask if that poster meant what I'm interpreting as their meaning.

I was acutally in agreement with what you originally said re happiness and acceptance Jay. Sorry if my reply didn't communicate that clearly.

Dagmar