Any other Lifetime members on here?

I reached Lifetime about 6 weeks ago and I am struggling to maintain. I find I am going crazy with eating and have it in my mind that I have lost all the weight now I can eat whatever.

I don't have many friends to support me so I would love to find some buddies on here!

Welcome! I have been a Lifetime member since 2006 and successfully maintained my weight up until this past year --gained 10lbs past my WWGW but am back down to GW now.

Maintenance is a completely different journey. You will have to play around with the pts and figure out what works for you. I remember thinking that once I reached goal, I could just finally be normal and eat whatever. But as I soon found out, NOT! It's a constant battle to this day.

I am a lifetimer -- alas, not at goal weight.

I do know where you are right now as I have been there. After I successfully went through maintenance ...events (and me!) conspired. I had to travel for business a few months after I got to lifetime. This unfortunately was also after I had had to eat a liquid diet for a few weeks due to surgery. Well the combination of being in a situation where I had to eat out almost every meal (I was with other people so had little control over eating out), plus being hungry for "real" food and trying to navigate being at lifetime and no longer needing to lose weight resulted in my overeating. I gained about 5 pounds over my goal weight.

Looking back on it ... that was nothing. But I was too embarrassed to go back while I was more than 2 pounds over goal (why it didn't occur to me to just go to another meeting place I have no idea) so decided not to go back until I was back to goal.

Well...that was 20 years ago!

The point being that if you are struggling, I really encourage going to the meetings.

I do think maintenance is so tough because it is such a huge mental shift. We all know the idea of working to lose weight and if you got to lifetime then you did very well at that. The problem is that, for many of us, we have much less experience with the idea of maintaining. We are used to either gaining or losing so if you aren't losing then...you must be wanting to gain. The cognitive shift to staying the same is a huge one.

Hi! I *just* made lifetime tonight (after THE hardest six weeks ever, I swear! *L*)

Congratulations!!!!! it's huge achievement!

I have been lifetime since 1977 and the best advice I can give you is to continue eating like you did to lose but increase portion sizes. Don't use the extra points for junk.