It's like a secret world. Anyone could be a maintainer. You just don't know because it would be ridiculous to ask every normal-weight person you meet, "Did you used to be fat?"

Last night I was watching The Newlywed Game, and one of the contestants (an attractive, healthy weight young woman) mentioned in her response to a question that she had a tattoo on her back that she had gotten "as a reward for losing the first 50lbs."

A couple weeks ago I was chatting with a coworker and she mentioned something about how she had gained (and subsequently lost) 50lbs after having to take steroids for a medical problem. (FWIW, she is one of the other people I see bringing her lunch from home and working out in our office gym every day, but I had never even considered the possibility that she might be a maintainer.) Now I'm wondering if I should forward her a link to the national weight control registry or if she'd think that was rude.

Maintainers in my office! Maintainers on TV! You'd never know it if they didn't mention it, and it's the kind of thing we're taught not to talk about.

Wasn't Anne Fletcher surprised when she started working on Thin for Life? That's exactly what she thought, if I remember correctly, that maintainers are everywhere!

And you're taught not to talk about it in your culture, but in mine, we'd be telling everyone and their mother!

Dieting is pretty dramatic, maintenance is not (except for those bad, bad weekends that we all have from time to time).

I have (mostly) maintained a weight loss for over 2 years now. No one notices. The first six months into the diet I saw several people who hadn't seen me in awhile and they were all surprised and complimentary.

No wonder no one talks about maintenance - no one sees it!

Dagmar

That's what I want! To be seen as a normal weight person! Not as someone who "was fat" and lost a lot of weight! The less people say and know about my size the better.

Most of my younger life I was a normal-weight person, and that's where I want to be again. What I have to do to stay there is really nobody else's business.

My 2 cents.
Jay