There are lots of good replies already (forgive me for not reading through them all, I hope I don't repeat too blatantly).
I'm in about the same boat as you. Similar starting and ending numbers and similar feelings.
I *enjoyed* losing. Once I got my motivation in gear and actually dug in and did it, I thought it was genuinely fun. I'm goal-oriented and can get a little obsessed about things, so the whole thing was like a big game to me. Between scoping out new low-cal foods, puzzling together low-cal yummy recipes (and learning how to cook in the first place), challenging myself with exercise, and of course, that addictive thrill of seeing a new low on the scale...it was all very exciting.
Like you, I wanted to get smaller for vanity reasons. I felt like, I've gotten this far, why quit just because I'm in the "healthy" range? If I'm going to change my life by losing weight, I'm going to change it until I'm completely happy with it. And I think that's entirely fair. I am a small person, I have a small frame and fairly pitiful muscle mass (that's with strength training, I'm just a scrawny person). I can be at the low end of my healthy range and still have some chub. I am thin, but I'm by no means skin and bone. My original goal weight was 150...I hadn't been that low since 5th grade. Once I got to that point, I realized I still had a looong ways to go.
I lost until I was happy. At 125-130 (ideally around 125-127), I am happy. I love how I look, how I feel, I can maintain it. I got to that point and didn't want to lose a pound more. BUT, I did miss the loss phase. Suddenly, I felt like now that I'd reached my goal, what else was there? The game was over. I knew how to cook foods to keep me happy, I knew how to exercise, I didn't have anything left to accomplish except put myself on autopilot and keep on keeping on. That got boring quick. I missed the thrill of seeing a new low on the scale, even though I didn't want to lose anymore. In fact, there were times when I upped my calories for a week because I was down to 123-ish. I missed the feeling of "I won! I have accomplished something!" because I'd played by the rules and lost weight. I had gotten so used to seeing a loss and feeling that it was my reward.
From my understanding of the shift from loss to maintenance, and certainly from my own experience, what you are feeling is pretty normal. We get so used to feeling that our accomplishment, our success, is based on seeing a new LOW on the scale. When we see that it's the same, day after day, it can be frustrating. Maybe I'm just speaking for myself, but I felt like I didn't have any goals. Like I said, I won the game, what more was there? It took a major brain shift for me to go from loss = success to maintenance = success. You wouldn't think it would be that difficult, but I really REALLY missed the high of the new low numbers.
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