Underanalysis! Welcome to maintenance! Good luck with the non-scale challenge - that will certainly be a very good check of your good habits.

I'm incrementing yardage in the pool and getting ready for what will be a slow 5k run next weekend. It's for hot chocolate and it's only 20 minutes away, and how could I say no? This Sunday is an informal swim meet for just our team; we indoctrinate the newbies so that they know what to expect when we kidnap them and take them to the state championships in April. I have a couple of events that I did at this time last year and will be curious to see if I'm kicking off the season from a better place.

My body image issues kind of hit me in the face today. I was in the foot doctor's office, and he said something about "a woman of your size." My mind immediately went to OMG, he's saying I'm fat. I never believe the people who tell me I'm slender or whatever, but when someone implies, at least in my mind, that I'm fat, I immediately pick up on that. I reached my Weight Watcher goal 8 years ago this month and have lost over 20 lbs. more since then, yet I still "feel" fat. Sheesh! Will that ever change?

JayZeeJay, that's it in a nutshell. That is EXACTLY the source of my stress. And I too could never face going into full-time clinical practice; the joy of research is what took me into academic medicine to begin with, and it's the 2 days/week I'm in clinic that are by far my least favorite part of the week.

Aw, Sheila, I feel for you! Although I haven't lost nearly as much as you I can understand the feeling of always being fat as I've never really been slender. We'll just need to remember we are in a healthy BMI and face the facts that our brains will mess with us.

I hear you, Sheila. I'm the same. When/if I doctor says anything about my weight, I can feel myself start blushing and my heart palpitating-- I have to force myself to listen and then I realize they are usually complementing me. We are always our harshest judges.

Made it through 2 days of carb cycling so today is another low carb day. So far, so good.

Dagmar,I am so glad you got your widdle puddy tat back.That happened to my son's cat and we found her 2 days later in a closed shed.We were so relieved to find her alive and well.
The last couple of days have been hectic for me.I was taking a 2 day first aid course that I found quite physical for my arthritic and almost 70 yr old bod.I persevered and got certified in CPR and AED training.I thought the automatic defibrillator did all the work.Not quite so because it will tell you if you should shock the casualty or continue with CPR till help arrives.I passed the written and practical and feel more confident if we have an emergency in our pharmacy because we have a public defibrillator.
I made salads with boiled eggs and took my lunch with me and the weight has stayed at 135 and all is good except my muscles ache from the workout doing all the compressions.Wow...I may be able to go head to head with Saef(just kiddin)

underanalysis. I haven't stepped on my scale since Oct. 1 and I'm pretty sure I will know the number on it Nov. 1. I didn't say I would LIKE the number . Nov 1 is when I switch back into "losing maintenance" and get back under my red line by Dec. 1.

Not having a number every day or week or whatever can be very freeing. Or it can be very dangerous. Sounds like your scale-free plan is a good one.

Dagmar

I've made it through 3 days of carb cycling and I'm liking it so far. Down about 1.5 pounds. My official weigh in day is now Saturday so I'll see where I am then. I may have a gain tomorrow morning because today is a higher carb day and I don't think I'll get my workout in. I have a massage this afternoon which I hope will help with my ever present sciatica, so I have to figure out if it's worth exercising later or just skipping today.

At 159.1 this morning, and starting to question whether I still belong in the "maintenance" forum. Yes, still down over 100 pounds. But at my physical on Monday afternoon, I am sure the doctor will inform me, as if I didn't know, that once I was in the range of 138-142, and now I am not.

At least this morning I am feeling like I can embark on an action plan. Yesterday I was full of self-recrimination.

Saef, you are a maintainer if you keep 1 pound off. Which makes you a maintainer 100-fold. I feel the same though, that I can't call it maintaining if I am not where I "should" be anymore.

Several things have brought me down recently, on the subject of body images issues that Sheila mentioned. First, at my annual wellness exam, they told me my waist measurement and I said "WHAT??" Apparently they now measure always at your belly button instead of your natural waist, and that added 2" to my number. It was grim, seeing it written down.

Second, I've been trying my darnedest to count calories and stick to it, but I've been up working very late most nights this week and it is hard to not eat more for energy. Then, an old friend asked me to meet her for a late Indian dinner and she ordered half the menu and said "let's share!". I'm sure the calorie damage was pretty bad despite my efforts. So I went home last night feeling poorly about myself, and then my husband says that he just had his own annual physical and he's continuing to lose weight and is very upset about it.

Of course some people naturally have inefficient metabolisms and don't tend to gain weight as readily, but I have married an extreme outlier. He eats plenty of full-fat dairy, chocolate, beer, carbs, etc. Granted he is quite active most of the time, and eats reasonable portions of food, so his behavior is a component as well. But he is just getting over a bad cold and had done nothing but sit and eat ice cream for 2 weeks prior to this weigh-in. He refuses to tell me what he weighs out of embarrassment (how's that for a role reversal), but I suspect he and I are neck and neck at around 140. Except he's 6 feet tall.

So, it's pretty hard to feel good about myself sometimes when I feel like a short fat troll in comparison to him. Not only do I clearly have a higher genetic tendency to obesity (one look at our respective parents makes that clear), but I have behavioral tendencies like eating out of stress etc. that he lacks, and my inability to eliminate those behaviors makes me feel even worse.

Sorry for the rant, I guess this has been building for a bit. Every time I cook a meal that is something I really want and need (lots of veggies, not too many carbs) I feel guilty because it's not high-calorie enough for him. So then I go too far the other direction making cakes, cookies etc. to help beef him up... but I can't stay out of them. I'm still trying to navigate these tricky waters.

Hi, everyone. Glad to hear that keeping off even 1 pound means you're still a maintainer, because that's about what I've done.

saef, did you get a new doctor yet? I hope so.

JayZeeJay, it might help to think in terms of "his food" and "my food." I had to do that when I was losing weight because my partner is a naturally thin person. It meant that we didn't make joint meals a lot of the time, meaning she had "her" food and I had "mine" even if we ate at the same time and prepared food together. And maybe that's something you can consider.

In other words, to paraphrase Mr. Spock in Star Trek IV, "They are not the he11 your cookies."

Oscar is feeling a lot better since we discovered Gerber's baby foods. He can actually get them down, and he likes the flavors. We get the meat-with-gravy selections. Prior to this he had lost 8% of his body weight in something like 3 weeks.

Hooray for baby food, JayEll! I forgot that about cats that don't want to eat-- baby food!

For those of us long-term maintainers that are struggling, I just want to throw something out there. Yes, I'm in the honeymoon period, but I'm really liking carb cycling and I'll explain why I think it's so effective for maintainers. After losing my weight, I continued to eat low calorie (for the most part), track, exercise, etc. However, I faced an almost constant battle keeping the weight off, though I fought tooth and nail. I really think my body got very used to maintaining with fewer calories (I typically ate 1300-1400 most days and adding vigorous exercise in). The theory behind carb cycling is that you rev up your metabolism by alternating higher carb and lower carb days so your body doesn't figure out what you're doing. It gets the metabolism up (like a furnace) and keeps it running-- especially if you exercise including strength training. I've only been doing it since Monday. I was 124 Monday (my redline is 125 and I'm always battling to stay below it). Today I'm 121 which I haven't seen in months. Sunday is "Sunday FunDay" where you can splurge a little or a lot (within reason). So, rather than feeling too deprived, I've been debating what I'll do Sunday. I'm eating 5 smaller meals a day and excited for the first time in months. This morning was difficult because there was a huge spread at my staff meeting-- including fruits, yogurts, oatmeal and more. It looked delicious but I knew I'd already had my breakfast (today is a low carb day but you always have carbs for breakfast so I'd already had oatmeal with fruit), and I knew I'd have my snack at 9 and my lunch at noon. The staff is currently eating their Costco pizza, salads and cookies while I snuck back in the library to get on the computer.

JayEll, another product that might be useful is CatSure (Ensure for Cats). I know when Chico wasn't eating he'd sometimes drink a little DogSure. Can't hurt anyway.

Thanks, Alinnell. We tried the Catsure, but Oscar had no interest in it whatsoever. That's the thing about cats. You can't even be sure they'll like the same thing two days running, and that's when they're healthy.

Welcome, UA!!! Nice to see you in the Maintainers.

JayEll, my daughter must be part-cat. I swear she maintains her weight through sheer fussiness. Glad you found something that works for Oscar.

TM, congrats on the carb-cycling success! I'm always amazed at how different things work for different people.

JZJ, a lot of men just live in a different universe in terms of weight management, including my husband.

Saef, my own experience with doctors, their assumptions about me, and their advice has been crazy-making. Glad to hear you have an action plan. Quick suggestion: try talking to yourself in the 3rd person, like, "What's best for Saef?"

Dagmar, I have experimented with staying away from the scale, but I tend to creep upwards when I do that. DH agreed that he will hold me accountable to weigh myself at least once a week (one big change from other times I tried to maintain).

Speaking of the scale, I am up to 139.4 this morning. Higher than I thought it would be and a family get-together is on the schedule today, so I'm probably going to be looking at a higher number tomorrow.