Hi Laurie and
to Maintainers!
There's a lot of folklore about weight loss that isn't backed up by science and I think your question raises one such issue.
I'm not aware of any study or research that correlates speed of weight loss with maintenance success. If any group were to study the question, it would have to be the National Weight Control Registry since it's a whole study group of maintainers, but so far as I know, they've never written about it. In fact, I don't remember being asked about speed of weight loss in the annual questionaires that I've received, though I probably had to fill something out about start and end dates when I enrolled back in 2003. Regardless, I've never seen any hard numbers backing up the idea, but I have seen studies that say that the biggest prediction of weight loss success is continued exercise -- Ann Fletcher cites one study in Thin For Life.
My entirely UNscientific opinion is that speed of weight loss isn't a big predictor of maintenance success. We have successful maintainers here who lost very quickly (Robin) and others who lost in chunks, maintained for a while, lost, maintained, etc., sometimes over a period of years (Nelie). Still others lost a bunch fast, then the last few pounds slowly (Glory). Yet they're all successfully maintaining.
I think that you put your finger on what makes a successful maintainer -- a conscious commitment to continuing the lifestyle that led a person to goal. An understanding that the diet is never over and we never can go back to the way we used to live. The realization that the tools and strategies that got the weight off are exactly the same ones that will
keep the weight off. And acceptance of the fact that maintenance takes as much work, planning, sweat, and discipline as did weight loss. Forever!
That being said, it may be that the longer it takes someone to reach goal, the more these lessons get hammered home. And of course, the longer you practice a skill, the better you get at it. I don't think any of us would be successfully maintaining if the Thin Fairy had shown up one night with her magic wand and made us all thin in our sleep (my personal fantasy!) Problem is, I would have woken up and had a bag of Oreos to celebrate.
But looking back at my own weight loss, I wouldn't change a thing about it. I lost an average of 2.4 pounds a week, though it was much faster in the beginning and down to seven pounds a month at the end. Fast? Maybe. But it still took me almost a year, which was ample time to learn every lesson that I needed for maintenance. Knowing myself, I think it would have been a mistake to slow down or pause for a while (though it works well for lots of people
). I needed that positive reinforcement of seeing the scale go down to keep my commitment level high. I needed the excitement of going down a clothes size every month to stay motivated. I needed to see change! And if I had stalled out around 160 (my original goal), I seriously doubt that I would ever have gotten going again. I guess I needed momentum to make it all the way through!
But let me qualify all that by saying that the biggest lesson I've learned here at 3FC is that there are as many ways to lose weight as we have members. When it comes to weight loss, very little is black and white, right and wrong. My way was right for me, but it doesn't mean that it's right for anyone else.
And I have to get up on my soapbox to say -- when it comes to "conventional wisdom" regarding weight loss maintenance, there is none. The message that we get from the media is that maintenance of a weight loss, especially a large one, is virtually impossible, so case closed. We here are writing the book on maintenance, one successful member after another. I've often said that someone needs to come study US!
So to conclude my very long winded answer, no, I don't think that speed of weight loss determines maintenance success. I think it's far more dependent on the recognition that weight loss is only Chapter One of the very long book of maintenance that happens to be the rest of our lives.
And Laurie, kudos to you on how far you've come and especially on how you're thinking about maintenance NOW.