I don't see a lot of maintainers who were 300+ and I'm wondering if it's just a coincidental correlation or if there's actaully any validity to the idea that it is more difficult for those of us who started at over 300 to get to goal and to maintain. I'm having an incredibly difficult time losing the last 20 (I know, it's a universal phenomenon) and maintenance will be **** if I have to work this hard every day for the rest of my life. I get so jealous when I see how quickly WLS surgery patients (especially ones who were over 300) so quickly get to their goals and begin maintenance. And I have seen former 300+ people who've had WLS and are at goal and maintaining, but little to none who've done it alone. Maybe it's because there aren't a lot of people who actually weigh over 300 pounds. But then I go to the 300+ thread, and there are many ladies, and there's only a couple floating around (who haven't had WLS) who've been over 300 and are at goal. I've been at the same weight for 3 months . . . I could have been at goal by now. And then I see goals weights of 130 and I say there's no way my body would even allow that weight on me. It likes the weight I'm at right now. But I don't. I just want to get to maintenance

What are everyone else's opinions on this?

Hmm, interesting question. I know when i lost weight last time, i started at 308, got down to 193 and stuck there FOREVER. I guess i would have eventually lost it, but unfortunately i am one of those who gained it back...almost all of it back. I was very fortunate having very few platueas but man, once i got to 193, i stuck and stuck and stuck there. I am 5'11" so really if you take our height into account we both kind of got stuck at the same place. I am interested to see what others say to your question. I know it is possible maybe it is just a bit more challenging.
Oh before i forget, HOORAY to you for doing such a good job. Wow, that is wonderful. You are a success story even if you do feel like you are stuck, way to go girl.

So why not move to maintenance now. Not that maintenance doesn't look a lot like weight loss, it's more your mind that adjusts. Give yourself a weight loss break, and see how it is to maintain at the weight you're at. You've done a great job, and lost over 125 lbs! Maybe your body wants a little rest. They're strange things you know! Have you read the success stories of many of the maintainers? Glory's comes to mind, mostly because she accepted where her weight "landed" and enjoyed it, started eating a little more for maintenance, and then actually lost another chunk of weight without being in strict weight loss mode.

I don't know why it should be any harder for a person who started over 300 than one who was under. I know people who've started in the upper 200's and had over 100# losses and are maintaining.

Well, I wasn't quite 300, but I was 289 at one point. That was the highest recorded weight anyway.

I lost down to the low 170s. And that is where I stayed (until the baby, but I'm pretty close to being back now). I maintained at a size 12. When I was much younger, jr. high-ish, I was in the mid 150s and was a size 14. I'm willing to admit there may have been some sizing creep in those 25 years or so, but I think it is safe to say that my body changed, and the number on the scale just didn't reflect how I felt about my body and my life.

What is it about the 170s that you don't like? Is it just the number doesn't match your goal? Are you at the size you envisioned, or did you want to move down more? Does your body look the way you wanted? Hard questions. If you are happy with everything but the number on the scale, you might need a mental readjustment. Yes, it does irk me that my 'after' weight is larger than many people's 'before', but that is just a number, and I am way way more as a person than just a number. It doesn't even begin to define me.

But if it is something else, you have to take a good long look at what you are willing to do to get there. As unfair as it is, the more you lose, the more you have to cut back to lose or maintain more. My weight is the best compromise between the body I want (Meg's) and the lifestyle I'm willing to lead, which is heavy on the exercise, but does allow me a cookie once in a while.

And, yeah, it might be good to take a break, evaluate, maintain, see how you feel about things, and then move on down if that is what you want to do. If you are in it for the long term, and by posting here you are at least thinking that way, a break is just a break, and not the end.

By the way, congrats on such a huge change! Hang around a post a while, I'm sure we'll all have something to learn from your experiences.

Anne

Meg posted some interesting stuff in this thread about how it seems to be more difficult for the formerly obese to maintain weight loss. Luckily, that has not been my experience! I maintain fairly easily on 1700-2000 calories with minimal exercise (I know, I should exercise more, for heart health if anything).

As WateRrat said, I did have a very long plateau. I did think my body was "done losing" and just happy at 140 lbs. I decided to move into maintenance mode and started eating more calories per day. The calories I ate per day were still very close to maintenance for someone of my height/weight/age/gender activity level, it was just a very small daily deficit. I ended up, very slowly over 9 months, losing another 13 lbs, without even trying. My weight has been stable at 127-130 since January 2006.

Although it's pure conjecture on my part (since I am not a doctor, nutrititionist or dietician), I like to think that the low calories of my initial weight loss (1400-1600) plan triggered something in my body that caused it to decide there just wasn't enough food in my environment. The body just put the brakes on, holding onto fat reserves JUST IN CASE I needed them. I "plateaued" for over 12 weeks.

When I started eating more, my body started thinking "oh, plenty of food here, no need to hold onto these fat reserves" and I was able to keep losing until I reached a weight where my body was really comfortable.

I don't really know if it's true or not, makes sense to me. I lost 50 lbs eating 1400-1600 calories a day. Weight loss stopped abruptly at 140 lbs, I tried eating less, I did more cardio, nothing. I start eating more (but still slightly below maintenance level) and lost more weight.

I know it sounds crazy, and I don't know if I would have had the patience to KNOWINGLY try it, but I like the advice to just chill and maintain for a couple of months. Let the body's feast/famine sensor re-set with lots of good, healthy food, keep up a little exercise. You have accomplished amazing things - you look absolutely beautiful.

Refresh yourself and then recommit in January, maybe? That does not mean that you can completely let go and eat RingDings. Treat this as a mini-maintenance, use it as a practice session for what your life as a maintainer will be. More calories = more healthy calories, not more nachos.

Thanks everyone!!!!

I'm comfortable at my weight now, but I'm not overjoyed. I'm a size 14 right now, and I'd like to get to a 12 or a 10. And even that is bigger than most girls my age. It's just frustrating to be struggling to get to a size that some people still consider big.

Since I've been "maintaining" already for 3 motnhs (like practice maintenance), I'm recommitting now and going back to the plan I started with, because it's the one thing that's consistently worked - but I've got to shave off another 100-200 calories. I hope it's the last time I'll have to do that.

Funny thing about the increasing calories - this is what I've been doing for the past few weeks. I tried eating 200-300 more calories than on my original plan, and it didn't work for me. But I didn't GAIN, I maintained. I just hate to think that I have to cut my calories again to start losing again. But I have to or I'll never make it to goal.

Thanks for that link, Glory. It's very informative

If anything, like one of my friends said, at least I know I can maintain a weight loss. I've maintained a 133 pound weight loss for 3 months!!! And that is a success.

I just had a thought - I hesitate to use the word "fair" but since we, the formerly obese - overate for years and years to become obese, doesn't it make sense that now we have to undereat for the rest of our lives? At one point in our lives, we ate whatever the **** we wanted to eat. And if you spread out the amount of food we overate and the measely amount of food we undereat because of our slowed metabolisms, it's got to balance out somewhere. I used to eat 2 or 3 times what an average person would eat, and maybe, if at the end of my life and at the end of some random average weight, normal eater's life, could our food consumption may be surprisingly equal? So I'm saying I ate the food I could have saved for later. It's like if were we're given out a food ration at birth, stored in a cave somewhere, I would have eaten 2/3 of my food by now, and have to live the rest of my life on the 1/3 food I have left. And the people who ate normally have nothing to undercompensate for. Or I'd be stealing from other people's caves . . . So, I'm saying overeating leads to a hypothetical life of crime No, but I do hope I've tried to explain what my point it so someone might understand.

So overeat now, undereat later. I think it would balance out.

Hi harpo,

Just a word on your last thought of the "fairness" of overeating and then having to "undereat" for the rest of your life.

As a depression prone person, I recognise this as a dangerous thought because it is the kind of thinking that you have to bear a negative consequence of past behaviour for the rest of your life, without being able to make up for it with present good choices. This would put you in a position where you have no possibility of having control over your destiny because the bad deed has already been done. That is a slippery slope that could lead to depression fast.

I think it is much better to accept that you may have made past choices with consequences that you are not happy with today, but that you, by making better choices now, are pulling yourself away from those bad consequences. That you are in control, and that it is your decision every day to make either the good or the bad choice, and that what you decide upon matters a lot.

Just my 2 cts worth,
Rabbit

Harpo, your last post seems rather fatalistic to me. But you said some a couple things that are undeniably true.

In effect, your body did save that food for later, or at least the food energy. It was stored in your body fat. And now you've used it up. It balanced out. You can look at it this way; any 'sins' you feel you have to atone for are literally off your back. You get a fresh new start. Congrats! Absolve yourself and move on.

How you eat now is up to you. There are no lifelong punishments. As for undereating the rest of your life, I think that will depend on your metabolism. And metabolism isn't a given either. Meg has posted some very good stuff on the 'reduced obese' and how we are different than 'normal' people. In general we need less calories than standard calorie calculators predict. But this doesn't even apply to all of us reduced obese--I maintain my weight loss at a calorie level that is pretty well predicted by those standard calculators for my weight and activity level and I believe there is at least one other maintainer around here who is more like me--can't for the life of me remember who it is right now. Granted I'm not maintaining at a size 4, but I'm healthy, active, and comfortable, and I'm still thrilled every day that I'm maintaining a size 12 instead of a 24.

You'll have to figure out what calorie level you'll need to maintain at the weight you choose to maintain. It might be smaller than you'd like, and it might be perfectly adequate. No one can predict. We all fall on a spectrum.

You've done an awesome job! Don't beat yourself with the past. Your future is your choice now, and you have every reason to believe it'll be a happy and healthy one.

Anne

These were fantastic posts!
Harpo, any idea how much of your "weight" or size is skin?

Mel

Congradulations Harpo on an amazing and inspiring accomplishment.

The experts have given you some great advice. The only thing I would like to add is the familiar one day a time theme. If we could never have a treat again it would be unbearable but if tonight I choose to have an apple instead of an ice cream I can do that.

My highest weight was 260 and now I am around 140.

Congradulations again, why not join us here for some support as you travel on this journey.

As a person formerly who weighed near 300 pounds and has lost over 100 pounds I am VERY interested in the question you initially posed. Unfortunately, I don't really have any answers.

But I wonder if one place to start is with the rates of loss. What percentage of people who weighed at or above 300 DO make it to a goal? Probably less than people with less to lose. There may be other factors involved, but at the very least, we need to lose OVER 100 pounds to even get close... the math is in the way. It takes a long time to lose over 100 pounds, etc... So maybe one reason we see fewer maintaining is that fewer get to goal.

The really interesting part is in comparing maintainers who weighed 300+ and maintainers who weighed less. Are there varying rates of success for people once they reach maintenance? If so, is it really different for people who weighed 250 or so to start? 200?

Oh, and are the goals different? My initially goal is just to get below "obesity" As you said, that's higher than many people's starting numbers. Am I more likely to have success if I keep that goal than if I set a lower one?? Again, I don't know...

Wow, I don't know a lot!!

A lot of it - There's handfuls of skin of my stomach and around my abdomen I know I have some fat still (on my thighs and the top of my butt) I was wondering if I could go to a plastic surgeon and he would say, "you know, I could take 20 pounds of fat and skin off of you." That would be great - but I'm going to wait it out at least until the end of the year. I'm back on the diet I started with.

Right. Plus when you get to 153 and he (9 out of 10 are male! isn't that weird) says that he could take off 20lbs you can very quickly (depending how many sugeries/months it takes) drop to 133 and feel uber proud!