Maintenance experiences

I am over 1.5 years out from surgery, down 100 pounds I have my goal weight  and now  starting to realize the enormity of this new dance called Maintenance.

Truth be told I was hoping to lose 5 more pounds, but the scale does not want to budge no matter how hard I try to vary my exercise or up my protein and eliminate any sneaky carbs that have found their evilness back into my daily life..

I am thankful every day for that pesky little brat called Dumping Syndrome, he reminds me that I had this surgery for a reason and I am thankful he makes me feel like crap if I even try to eat sugar.

I am now using an app on my phone called Fitness Pal and tracking everything that goes into my mouth because I can now eat more than I could a year ago and that scares me.

For those of you on this forum who are now on maintenance, how is it going for you?  Do you have any good advice to share?  Any and all suggestions are welcome

Thank you

Deb Wright

Deb,

Congratulations on your success! You are right in assuming that Maintenance is a different journey than the Weight Loss journey, but they are somewhat related and you are likely to find that some of skills you developed while losing your excess weight will hold you in good stead as you learn to maintain all of loses and gains you have worked so hard to achieve.

I have found that the real keys to long term success are based on maintaining awareness and accountability. How we do that really varies from one person to another. For example, I can't just use clothes tell me where I am because I gain all over and gain gain more weight than I want before I move from one size to another, even though I only wear fitted clothes so I get on the scale daily. I tried just weighing once a week, but I'd forget and 1 week would turn into 2 or 3. For me, weighing daily is one way to really maintain my awareness and personal accountability. Another thing I do is wear a pedometer to remind me to keep my tail moving. It motivates me and makes me aware of my activity level. If my weight moves beyond it's normal swing of 3 to 4 lbs each direction, then I know I need to start logging again to see where I'm dropping the ball. Usually I find that the issue is that I'm getting too many simple carbs and with them, too many calories. I also make sure to lead with protein, follow with complex colorful carbs and finally, if I have room I indulge in some simple carbs. 

It took some trial and error for me to come up with this, but it really works very well for me.

Wishing you continued success, 

It's going OK for me.  I think the important thing to remember is that we do still need to stick to our plan.  It's been pretty easy for me to start to slack off a bit since I'm not trying to lose anymore and it is OK to have an occasional treat but I find I need to stay alert because it would be easy for me to eat too many treats.

For me, I weigh often and my goal is to follow my protein needs AND comply with better choices 80% of the time.  I do struggle still with enough liquids that I continue to have and remind myself about but otherwise it's been fairly easy to maintain so far. 

Agree with what's been said above. The key to maintenance (at least as I see it so far) seems to be remembering that reaching maintenance doesn't mean we're "done" by any means. Indeed, it's only the beginning of the most desperate vigilance because there are fewer physical factors that will keep us in check if we're not behaving. We still have the tool, but we can eat more food, generally have higher tolerance for "bad" stuff, and less caloric malabsorption. It's like, "Now the REAL work begins." But we have a head start because it's so much easier to try to maintain, or to lose 5-10 pounds, than to need to lose 100 or more.

I'd add, though, that one of the biggest things I've had to realize is that I have to structure the way I eat differently now than I did at first. I'm no longer satisfied when I eat 1/4 cup of...anything. So I've had to become more comfortable with eating salads and low-carb vegetables like okra, zucchini, asparagus, mushrooms, etc. etc. This way, I get satiated without a bunch of calories.

Relatedly, I've changed my eating schedule. A year and half ago (when I was 1 yr out), I was eating 7 times a day as part of my plan because I needed to increase my calories, but my pouch size wouldn't allow volume and I didn't want to start loving calorie-dense foods. Now, because of the satiation factor, I find myself eating 4-5 times a day (sometimes 3, but that's rare) but having slightly larger portions.

Finally - STICK TO THE RULES. That means vitamins at appointed times, no drinking right after meals, exercising, protein -- all of these things are just as or even MORE important as we get further out than they were at first.