Howdy. I still have a ways to go before this is even an issue, but I've been thinking a lot about what I will need to do when I get to my goal. I've been very disciplined so far in my weight loss journey, and eating healthy is definitely in my plans for the rest of my life, but I wonder if I can ever ease up a little bit once I'm at goal.

I quit smoking a little over a year and 1/2 ago, and gained somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 lbs. in the first few months. My quit from smoking is pretty secure, so I started the eating right, lower calories and more exercise thing in mid-February. Before I quit smoking, I was a maximum of 20 lbls. over my current goal wieght, and I ate some good food, some junk, and was not a binge kind of person.

Once a prson is obese, do they (I) have to pinch calories forever? Or am I likely te be able to keep up the activity and in so doing be able to have a biscuit and gravy once in a while? I know that nobody can eat truckloads of junk and stay thin, and I'm not expecting to do that. I'm trying to discover what is realistic.

Thanks for any help/ideas/suggestions you can offer. It's hard work getting this extra weight off, much harder than it was to put it on, and I DO NOT want to have to ever start all over again!

Barb

I am not at goal weight, but I think it is something you kind of have to experiment with. I think most successful maintainers still keep track of calories eaten and some also track calories burned. As long as they balance out on average you should be able to maintain and still have some junk once in a while.

I think you should be able to have a biscuit and gravy once in a while. I mean, you want to enjoy life, right?

There are so many factors that go into your individual maintenance. Some of it will be related to what weight you stop at and how much work it takes to maintain that.
Also how much exercise you do. You don't have to be a fiend about it (unless you like it, as I do).

It's all things in moderation. I hate that saying, yet it is very true.

I am on the national weight loss registry. Once you have lost all the weight you want to, you have to keep on doing the same thing. You can add back calories a little at a time until you get to the point where you quit losing. Try adding 200 a day for a week and see how that does, then add 100 the next week if you are still losing, then 50 etc. Once you figure out your maintenance calorie level, that is what you will eat for the rest of your life with this admonition...every time you get to a new decade in age beginning at 40, you have to cut 100 calories a day or you will gain. You will also need to continue keeping your food diary and exercising.

It depends on what you mean by "ease up." If you ease up with too much food for your daily burn, you could start to gain the weight back. That's pretty obvious.

Biscuit and gravy? Sure, you can have it anytime, even during weight loss--HOWEVER, a biscuit with sausage gravy is around 600-700 calories. So I would go so far as to say that for all of us with "weight problems," a breakfast of biscuits with sausage gravy, eggs, hash browns and toast is going to always be way, way more than what we ought to eat in a meal, unless we eat nothing else the rest of the day.

You just have to plan it out. Choose your foods with your brain instead of with your eyes, nose, and mouth.

Jay

WOW - 200 calories less than your weight loss. I just reached my goal and was consuming about 1100 - 1200 calories a day. So I would have to cut back to 900 - 1000 - that doesn't seem releastic for me anyway.

I added 100 calories a day and am continuing to do the same exercise if not a bit more than I had before. So I am hoping this will work. I am just going to keep an eye on that scale and those numbers for quite a long time to come.