If I start posting here and being part of the gang?

I know I still have a long way to go, but right now I'd like to start "maintaining" the lbs I've lost so far.

Maybe I don't belong here yet, but I do spend most of my time reading the maintenance forum, and the support and info I've found here is what helps me to keep on the right track to permanent weight loss.

Would you accept me as a new member??? Pretty please with Splenda on top?

Of course not - as soon as you lose 1lb you ARE a maintainer. I wish more people felt comfortable posting in here!!

YES, YES, YES

Come join us!

I used to read through the posts here a lot, way before I got to goal, and before I had even posted at 3FC. It was amazingly helpful and you don't have to be at goal to be a maintainer! Maintaining any loss is a huge achievement.

Welcome!

You absolutely belong here and we're delighted to have you!

Please join us.

Even though I still have most of my weight still to lose, I also do consider myself a maintainer, really for the first time ever. I've spent most of the last 36 years (since my first diet at age 5) losing or gaining, never maintaining. I did have about three diet-free years where my weight remained stable (but at a weight, that at the time, was it's highest point).

I've never lost weight and maintained that loss, until about three years ago. It's taken me three years to lose 48 lbs. Sometimes (because of old diet thinking) it feels like a massive failure, but in reality it's an unprecedented success. To be three years on a downward trend (even if moving very slowly) is uncharted waters for me.

I'm finally off medications (like prednisone) that make weightloss tougher, and my overall health and stamina are improving, so I'm hoping that I can speed up the weight loss. However, I have changed my attitude about speed defining success. Just maintaining is success, perhaps the most difficult component of success. So, in that regard, I've had three years of success - a personal best "record."

It's so easy to feel that anything short of ultimate goal is failure. A slow or no loss week can seem like a tragedy when you don't step back and look at the big picture. Lack of quick progress, in the past, would have resulted in depression, frustration, and feelings of failure. I'd decide that "this just isn't working," and go back to old habits and regain all of the weight (and usually some extra for good measure).

The difference "this time" is that I celebrate every pound lost as a victory in and of itself. If I never lose another pound, maintaining a 48 lb loss is still a success worth celebrating. In that regard, there's never a reason to give up. Feeling that the next 200 lb loss may be out of my reach, is never a reason to give up on the 48 I have lost.

Why is it so easy to see partial success as total failure? When weight loss progress seems out of reach, why is the most common reaction to give up (and regain) rather than to preserve the progress made so fair (maintain)?

Ah, the philisophican quagmire that is weight loss...

Great post, Colleen! And a big Maintainers welcome to you too.

A favorite exam question on nursing tests everywhere is: When does discharge planning begin? The answer: Upon admission to the hospital.

I believe that philosophy applies to weight loss and maintenance.

When does maintenance begin? With the first pound lost.

Our obesigenic culture of calorie-laden nutrient poor foods and lack of purposeful movement is a set up for weight gain. Maintenance is truly a triumph, whether that maintenance is 5 pounds lost or 50 pounds lost. We know that the health benefits of losing 10% of body weight are impressive.

Maintenance does not begin when we reach a scale reading of a random number. It begins when we consciously move and eat in a way to not add scale pounds or body fat.

Maintaining is also the hard part, I think. We all know how to lose weight. But to keep it off, to not gain....well that is the trick, isn't it?

I fully expect my scale to continue to decrease, but I have an upper limit that I will stay below even if I never lose another pound. And that is how I am defining my success and maintenance.

So, welcome!

I have always said that if you want to learn to ride a bike you don't go to a swimming pool!

These are the people who have done it. It is worth our visits (frequently, I hope) to sit at their feet and listen to what they have learned not only how to lose the weight but also the day to day of maintaining the weight they have lost.

I agree with what kaplods and midwife said. So much so that I copied and pasted it and filed it away in my general folder of "A New Me" which I have on my desktop and at my fingertips every day.

It is a struggle to lose the weight but I am sure that it will a different struggle to maintain it as well. I can barely wait. I think of it as somewhere between third stage labor pushing and a new baby in my arms. I'm sweating and suffering but gosh darn it when that new one in my arms I am never going to let her go!!

Great discussion and for the maintainers!!

Pamataga, I had the same starting weight as you. And like you said, it's a struggle to lose weight, a struggle to maintain it, but none of them are as difficult as the struggle of being OVERweight.

Welcome! Welcome! Welcome! One and ALL.

I'm starting to think that if more people had thoughts about maintaining when they begin their weight loss that maybe the stats on successful maintainence would be higher.

I have high hopes that we can change those miserable statistics -- I don't think it has to be the case that 90+ % of the people who lose gain it back. Knowledge IS power!

So, yeah, welcome!

I think a good amount of the failure rate is because people see it as an all or nothing endeavor. If they were willing to look at each pound individually as a success, would they give up as easily? I don't think so.

If I don't get to claim reward and recognition (at least to myself) until I reach goal, it makes the journey a lot more frustrating, disappointing, and just plain unpleasant. If the weight I've lost doesn't count at all until I reach goal, then yes, it makes sense to "chuck it all," if I realize (or think) that I can't make it to the finish line.

It isn't that most dieters lack common sense, it's that the rules we have been taught for dieting often don't make sense. We have to learn to break the rules, and disregard "common wisdom," when it comes to finding what really works and is "true" for us.

I agree, but I'm hoping we can help create a NEW, more effective, common wisdom!

Well after reading this I realize that I am a "maintainer in training". I have "officially" lost 31 pounds. I only count the doctors scales as my official weight. It has been 3 weeks since my last doctors appointment, right now my "unofficial" total is 38.

I really do believe knowledge is power. Everyday I read someone's success story, or some tidbit of nutrition information. I am developing a maintainence plan in my head for when I get to goal. I have never thought that way before. I used to be..."I can't wait to get off this $@#%&*@ Diet so I can eat.....!!" Now I think of what I am hungry for, if it is chocolate I have a LITTLE BIT. I am extremely portion conscious. I know if I go over my calorie limit (which I have only done twice since January 21st & both times were less than 200 calories) then I have to spend extra time in the gym to make up for the extra calories.

This would be a good place to thank every one for sharing their stories. I find each and everyone of them an inspiration.