How To Maintain Your Weight Loss

In regards to maintaining weight loss. It has to be said that there is no Gospel truth to how its done. We are all built differently and therefore, our bodies will react individually. All your tips were interesting...I gained 20pounds in the last 2yrs and I honestly don't know why as my eating habits never changed. I have made a committment to shed and maintain the pounds but it sure does take committment. I exercise often and eat a good breakfast, fruits for lunch and a small dinner. I haven't lost any weight so far but I am very willing to stick it thru.

One meal a day continues to be the best plan I've ever been on. This is so easy and I have so much more energy. Pants are a little looser each day.

I eat a well-balanced meal in the morning plus a sweet such as fat-free ice cream with some chocolate sauce and cherries. I must say that I'm not hungry in the mornings now but I eat anyway. I still enjoy the food but I can't eat a lot. I make sure to add good fats like Olivio and olive oil to up the calories.

Well I have lost a little over a 100 pounds and it took me 2 and half years to do it. Prior to that I had been the classic yo-yo dieter. I could only make changes for 3 to 4 months then miss my junk foods. I'm convinced it is a chemical imbalance in the brain. Obese people lack the normal serotonin receptors in the brain and then crave sweets and high carb foods which increases the serotonin in the brain. The way to countered it is exercise which increases serotonin in the brain. If I stop exercising my serotonin will get low again and I will start craving sweets and high fat carbs. Along with exercise of course is low fat and low calorie foods. That's how I did it and plan to continue. Although losing the weight was much easier than maintaining it. I'm going to stay the course. Also, once you start exercising and eating healthy there's a pleasure element to it.

I am 27% smaller than I was in August of 2002. At my all-time low I was 33% smaller than my all-time high. Count me as a success or failure, as you please. I am what I am. I am a participant in the National Weight Control Registry. According to empirical research (not surveys), I am among only 3% of the population of radical weight losers (defined as maintaining only 10% loss). I, therefore, call myself a success.

Maintaining radical weight loss (for me, more than 50 pounds) is not a lifestyle. It is a third- to half-time unpaid, thankless job. That's not to say it's joyless. One must insert joy into it, as one does one's job. The surface level behaviors that the NWCR has outlined are all reasonable and, in my case, applicable: Eating breakfast, exercising longer and harder than most people, weighing daily, eating a well-balanced reduced calorie diet, eating consistently even on holidays, weekends, family gatherings and other challenging times. Beyond that, there are two "walls" that a weight loss maintainer hits and must overcome.

Wall one: at the end of the coast. Weight loss is down-hill skiing; weight-loss maintenance is cross-country. Everyone cheers the down-hill champions. Cross-country skiers are lonely, and they are no one's celebrity.

Further complicating the shift from down-hill to cross country skis, when you are at the end of your coast, your endocrine system kicks in and starts dancing the "Wow, you just lost a lot of weight, and you better eat" tango. You're impelled toward the pantry. You know it isn't logical. You accuse yourself of being an emotional eater, or some other fad thing. That's unfortunate. It's normal from your body's perspective. It's difficult, and it's too detailed for a blog post, but it's gotta be confronted then and again at recurring periods throughout weight-loss maintenance.

Wall two: You come to the painful realization that unlike the naturally trim gym rats, who work out as hard as you do, you can NEVER take a significant vacation from exercise. They can, and do, sometimes for a month or more. They return to the gym a little flacid, but they get their groove back quickly, because they are rested and renewed. You take more than two days off, and there are weight consequences, and the weight DOESN'T "come right off" when you return to your routine, as people who are ignorant of this condition often say (even educated people don't know). Those pounds cling like terriers. Your body doesn't know that there's this BMI chart that has defined "normal" as 18.5 - 25. Your body only knows that it established a much higher norm for you, and you aren't living up to your potential. You give your body a pound back, and it will hold on to it.

This is where the true challenge of "inserting joy" into your third- to half-time job becomes an art.

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