A Maintenance Question for Vets

I'm not on maintenance so am asking here. Also, I peeked at the maintenance group and it seems kind of quiet.

I know someone who stopped weight loss when she realized that her body was easily maintaining a weight she was comfortable with, even though it was slightly overweight, and she was having to "fight" to lose more. I understand that choice. She interpreted it as her body telling her it was happy, and that her efforts to keep going would put her back in the "diet hell" mode she'd spent too much of her adult life enduring.  Three years later she's still happy and maintaining with little effort.

At three or four stages in my journey, life cir****tances have made it difficult to deal with a 600-800 calorie daily intake and I've allowed myself to slide, and have had no problem maintaining (not gaining****il I can shift back into losing mode again.

What I'd like to believe is that if I get down to my goal (or lower) that this will be true, whatever that (reasonable, healthy) goal is, just as it has been so far.

What is your experience?  Have any of you had to work hard to stay at goal, the way we all did before the sleeve? 

Does a body have a weight it "likes" and to go below it is to always have to work at it? Or is maintenance pretty much the same whether you're maintaining at the bottom of "normal" or the top of "normal" BMI?

I don't think you can underestimate the mental part of the struggle.  I think the anxiety and anticipation of reaching "GOAL" causes us to slow down and struggle to get there.  For me that was definitely the case.  Once I declared that I was done, for all the same reasons your friend did, I dropped another 10 lbs without even trying.  My body has now seemingly settled between 13 and 18 lbs below that "goal"

The hard part of maintenance, for me, is not really the weight part but the head stuff that comes along with it.  There are some days I live in terror of the scale going up even though it honestly needs to.  I am learning to trust myself with food and maintaining my weight.  I have to learn to listen to my body all over again.  I got used to , during weight loss, always questioning my motives for wanting to eat.  Now I have to be careful not to ignore actual hunger by assuming that it is head hunger.

Don't be afraid to ask in the maintenance group - while its definitely not as active in the main forum, people respond quickly when you need help and the information is much higher quality - Theres not the level of BS you see in the main forums.