So, how do you exactly eat at maintenance? (Especially without feeling guilty)

Hey folks, hope the weight loss journey is going well for you.

So, this winter I decided it was time to cut some weight. Most of it was related to some pretty messed up stuff that's happened where I'd been misdiagnosed with some Godawful condition an 80+ year old, diabetic stroke survivor usually would have.

Safe to say it left me with some pretty bad health related anxiety, that just got worse and worse during the lockdown. I've been an athlete my entire life so this whole thing threw me off balance, and made me realize that I needed to take better care of myself (as I've always had, thinking back at it.)

Anyway, I'm doing better now. Anxiety pretty much disappeared once I started clinicals (I'm a nurse student), and when you face the tragedy of the human condition on a daily basis you definitely become desensitized to it.

To give you some context, I'm 26, standing at 5'8" and walking around at 155 lbs, which was my goal weight for competition purposes (I train judo). At the beginning of this cut I was rougly 200-205 lbs (I'm also a powerlifter, but I'd never baloon up like that again, it's not worth it.)

I'm currently eating between 1900 and 2100 kcals a day (but I tend to overestimate most of the time), training 6 days a week, 3 days lifting weights, 3 other days I run 11k (cause my dojo is closed again . . . damn covid). I take sundays off. "Off" meaning I go for walks on the beach both in the morning and evening.

On top of all this keep in mind I'm a nurse student currently away to college, and I don't have a car here. So pretty much everything I do I do it on my feet lol So I spend the majority of my days walking to point A to point B either in the wards or on the street, whether that be going to work, or to the grocery store or finally going back home.

Now that I'm at my goal weight I feel it's time to just try to maintain this weight. Thing is I can't help but feel guilty, and sometimes out right scared I might mess myself up (I had high cholesterol before the cut, and it was still high during the weight loss but last time I checked it was improving.)

I don't eat any garbage food (which I did back when I bulked for PL), thing is I'm starting to overthink and double guess even the good things I'm eating. If you wonder what I eat I'll summarize it like this: "I eat the same amount of veggies a vegan would eat . . . and their share of meat too." Macros look something like this: C: 130-150; P: 180-200; F: 50-70. (I know I don't need that much protein, but it keeps me full for longer.)

But I really need to get over this way of thinking, because it's beginning to take a toll on my performance at work . . . like I'm not eating enough, y'know?

So yeah, do you guys have any advice on how to eat at maintenance without overthinking it and getting over the fear of getting fat again? MFP says I should be consuming around 2700 kcals, and that seems way too much to me.

PS: Oh and here's a progress pic I'm really proud of! https://imgur.com/a/hjdHI6h

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Today is Day One ... Thousand!

Today MFP greeted me with "SmilingJaguar has logged in for 1000 days in a row!" It has also been a year since I officially entered the normal BMI range and have nominally been "in maintenance" since November 1, 2019.

To celebrate the achievement I extracted all of the weight information I had in Apple Health and created two charts from that

All time('14-'20): https://i.redd.it/knwcgz2w1ux51.png you can see the slow, but steady rise from 2014-2018, followed by my weight loss journey.

The past year: https://i.redd.it/s2n5ukoh3ux51.png you can see the two early instances of having a sudden weight "spike" that challenged my 10 lb maintenance window.. The first spike is right around Christmas when I ate a single medium bowl of restaurant ramen. The second is when I started trying to eat back all of my exercise calories after hitting my lower control rail of 160 for the first time.

Both of these events are just water weight changes. They came on and also went away far too quickly to be anything else. It's all about that 90+ lb bag of water I carry around with myself all the time, but if I wasn't holding to my routine of weighing myself every day I might not know that for sure.

Since that second event, I decided to have my lower maintenance control rail be more flexible than the higher rail. I now allow my weight to drop below my lower control rail, and if it stays at a new low for a week I will just shift my 10 lb range a bit lower.

Today's weigh in was 153.4, I know that's a bit BS. I went for a shorter but more intense run yesterday and worked late into the night so I'm probably dehydrated. Realistically, I'm hovering in the 155-156 range most days in the past 30 days and the lowest my weekly average has ever been is 153.5 for a few weeks in the summer. So that sets my current range at 153.5-163.5 lbs. 155-156 is thus "under control" and near the lower end of the range.

I've mentioned in the regular "Century Club" threads about my recent struggles with over-indulging a bit over the past few weeks with the change in weather, holidays and external work/covid/political stresses and it sure looks like my attempts to get that under control have been successful!

I have recently started logging my food intake in https://youate.com/ alongside MFP, as I'm more interested in the visual feedback of what I'm eating as opposed to the detailed calories. I'm probably not giving up on MFP just quite yet, it has served me well for 1000 days! However, if things stay under control until next summer, I may try without MFP for a while as long as I have an alternative in place for the self-accountability that matters to me.

Even though it's day 1000 for me, it's still also Day 1. Day 1 of the next 1000 days where my choices will help me keep my weight where I want it, be it here, higher or lower. I expect to continue to weigh myself every day that I can, log my food intake, track my activity levels, etc...

Anyhow. Thank you r/loseit ! I couldn't be where I'm at without all of support and advice from the regulars (and many not-so-regulars!) here.

If I can lose 100+ lbs in my fifties after almost 3 decades around 250 lbs, you can too! You may need to find a different path that better suits you, but you CAN and WILL do it if you put in the effort.

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Guys please help me get out of my head! I am so close to my GW but am getting more anxious and obsessive than ever!!

24F, 158cm/5’2”

SW: 59kg/130lbs, CW: 52.3kg/115lbs, GW: 50kg/110lbs

My progress

How I look now

Hi y’all! First time poster here on r/loseit. I’ve always dreamed of posting on this sub once I reached my goal weight and share my journey, but here I am, posting while my goal seems so close yet unreachable. Hope y’all can give some insight.

I’ve started my weight loss journey since the start of May 2020, two months after returning from the US to my home country and had the time of my life eating my heart out, when I reached my highest weight ever (59kg/130lbs). I’ve lost weight through CICO before during university using MyFitnessPal so the process was familiar to me. I set my rate at 1kg/2.2lbs per month so it would be sustainable and healthy for my height of 5’2”, and basically everything went as planned.

Now, six months later, I’m at 52.3kg/115lbs, which is super close to my first GW of 52kg/114lbs and not far away from my ultimate GW of 50kg/110lbs. However, instead of celebrating my progress and continuing with the slow and steady method, I find myself getting super obsessive and temperamental. My mood of the day depends completely on how much I weigh that morning. And that is even with using Happy Scale. Yet even if I hit a new low, I can still spend the entire morning/day obsessing over weight loss related stuff! I would meticulously check my MyFitnessPal entries, pour over my Happy Scale graphs, and of course, lurk in this sub till I read every single post of the day!!!! Like wtf, I know this is crazy, but I can’t stop! I never used to be like this, but recently I’ve found myself in this obsessive, controlling cycle. I feel like I can’t be at peace until I finally see that god damn 50kg on the scale!

Has anyone here experienced something similar? Please let me know how you dealt with it. I’ve stopped weighing myself since two days ago but it’s still at the back of my mind. And yes, I know many of you will say to focus on physique instead of the number, please note that I AM doing weight training, but unfortunately I do also care about the scale ಥ_ಥ I would love to get more feedback about the psychological side of things. Thank you!

TL;DR - Getting increasingly obsessive as I get closer to my goal weight. Need help and advice on how to continue my journey with a healthier mindset.

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I'm back -- well, I'm crawling back -- to Lose It

I started my weight loss journey on 7/12/19 at a weight of 313.3 pounds (I'm a 60-year-old, 5'9" woman) after I had a couple of small strokes. I was SO motivated to lose weight after that health scare and by 3/13/20 (8 months later), I had gotten down to 224.6 pounds (an 88.7-pound loss). I read Lose It faithfully and when I would read all the posts about people struggling because they were putting the weight back on (or had put the weight back on) I smugly thought, "It's not hard to lose weight -- just eat fewer calories!" I was using My Fitness Pal to keep track of my calories. I don't remember now where I started at as far as calories go (I just went by what MFP said to eat), but eventually I got down to 1,200 per day. It wasn't easy, but in my gung-ho mindset, it wasn't too-too hard either. The weight consistently fell off.

But then the coronavirus hit. California went on a stay-at-home order on 3/19/20 and I decided that that was my excuse to stop counting calories and to eat whatever I wanted to. I baked to my heart's content (I love to bake). Now, here it is almost 8 months later and I've gained back 47 of the almost 89 pounds that I had lost. I understand the struggle so many of you have had in trying to keep the weight off better now. I can totally empathize now.

I've started trying again (as of the day before yesterday) and I'm back to looking at the Lose It sub-Reddit again. I'm starting off slow and telling MFP that I just want to lose 1/2 a pound a week instead of trying to lose 2 pounds a week like before. I'll be happy if I can just stop seeing weight GAINS every week. (Oh, that's something that I have continued doing, even during my weight gain period -- I still weigh myself faithfully every Friday morning. It was the only thing I was doing that made me be accountable.)

Yes, it was *glorious* being able to eat the way I have been eating since March. I enjoyed myself *immensely*. But (and this is no surprise to you guys, I'm sure), I am NOT enjoying this 47-pound weight gain. I move slower. My joints ache more than normal. I have a harder time trying to tie my shoes. I'm having to buy bigger clothes. And of course, I have that looming fear in the back of my mind that I'm going to end up having another stroke. My doctor has expressed his concern that I've gained so much weight. I have GOT to get a handle on this again.

I am terrified of catching the coronavirus. I'm overweight -- comorbidity #1. I'm diabetic. My blood sugars are under control, but that's comorbidity #2. I've got high blood pressure. Not out-of-control high, but I have enough high blood pressure readings to make it a little bit concerning. That's comorbidity #3. I'm up there in age -- comorbidity #4. I'm being extremely careful and doing everything I can to avoid exposing myself to situations where I could catch it.

I'm going to do my best to "get back to the basics" again and do what I need to do to lose this weight -- first, lose the 47 pounds that I've gained and then to continue to work towards my goal weight. It felt SO good to get down to 225 pounds back in March -- I loved the way my clothes were fitting and I loved how much more energy I had. I can't wait to feel that good about myself again and to have that much energy again. Wish me luck!

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There is hope for normalcy.

Had a major revelation that I wanted to share because I'm sure I'm not the only one....

I've always hovered around the 24 bmi mark. Not overweight, but not thin. I was always a big eater. I love food. Right before I got pregnant the first time, when I was fresh out of college, I had juuuust tipped the scales at 25.1..finally overweight. I went on to gain over 60 pounds that pregnancy. I had just lost my grandpa to diabetes and the weight gain, plus an almost diagnosis of gestational diabetes, put a fire under my tail to get healthy and lose it. That started an eight year journey of strictly enforced rules and anxiety. Lots of veggies and quinoa and whole wheat. I had two more babies and gained it all back each time. Had to lose it all over again after each one. I was so sure that my body was just dying to be fat, that I had uncontrollable urges and my body couldn't be "trusted" around certain foods. I thought my strictly enforced rules were necessary for the rest of my life, that this was just my fate since I can't be trusted around food. There was sooo much anxiety, with a few dips into some very unhealthy disordered behaviors.

So imagine my anxiety in 2020....I started my career and no longer have time to spend two hours a day at the gym. Then I got really sick in the spring and couldn't do any exercise for about two months...walking was strenuous even. And food? Gah. I started working and was suddenly faced with weekly doughnuts and cakes and occasional catered lunches. We suddenly had money for restaurants so our family got lax and Friday nights at the Chinese restaurant became a thing. Pizza got ordered once every couple weeks. We started going out for lunch after church on Sundays. These things were unheard of before, first because we couldn't afford it and second because I had it in my head that if I ever started eating out again then that would automatically equal me being overweight again.

Well. Here I am. Ten months later. The feared weight gain? It never came. I actually weigh a few pounds less than I did in February. I'm not counting calories. I'm not working out. (I will eventually start again, but my body needs a rest in this season and self-care right now means walking on the weekends and not beating myself up for that being it.) My diet isn't that great compared to what it used to be. This past week for dinner we had bbq chicken sandwiches and tots on Monday, plain old tacos on Tuesday, cheese pizza on Wednesday (picked up from Little Caesars because we were running somewhere), spaghetti on Thursday (with WHITE pasta....idk who I even am anymore), and homemade sheet pan pizzas last night. My mother-in-law left cokes in our fridge from Halloween last weekend, so I've been sipping a mini coke each day as well. Awful food, right? And this isn't the only week like this. Some weeks we're cooking whole30 dinners; some weeks are like this...eating food I thought would make me fat again. But nope. Turns out, my body learned its lessons. I'm not the same woman I was 8 years ago. I can't force myself to overeat like I could before. I had two slices of pizza last night. A small plate of spaghetti the night before that. Both of those foods used to be big triggers for me. I buy chips for lunches now, and there's no doubt in my mind that the handful I put in my lunchbox is gonna be all I want. I could tearrrrrr up some chips before. Now....I'm good after a lot less.

This realization has been a huge weight off my chest. I can just be normal, not consumed with food and counting and planning. I can eat whatever and trust my body to not overeat and to tell me when it's time to go back to healthier dinners (I'll start easily getting nauseated now after a few days of not great food). I wanted to share this because I know there are lurkers on here, feeling the same bricks I felt for years after my weight loss. I know you're terrified that this obsession with eating just right will have to follow you forever or immediate weight gain will follow. And I want to tell you that maybe that's not true. Your body really can reset itself. It can be "normal".

I guess my point is that losing it is a long battle. You're gonna have to fight for years. Like most battles though, there will come a day when it's time to put down your weapons. There will be peace. It might be a tenuous peace at first. But eventually it'll be peace and the battle will truly be over. There's hope for that.

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NSV: I fit in to my precovid jeans again!

28F, 5’7 if you’re interested. Editing to add a little further context, per the rules: - i was in extremely good shape in summer of 2019 - lots of travelling so walking, and dietary changes that had been slowly increasing for 9ish months - 2020 threw a wrench and a half in that. I don’t weigh myself or anything like that, but I went up 2 pants sizes in 3 months. From a 10 to a 14 Canadian/US sizing - this is a big deal to me bc of the mental battle - ohmygod im starting even below square one. How did this happen, can I do it again - what I’m trying to get across here is how I kept myself mentally well and motivated to start over, during a global freaking pandemic.

I don’t think anyone’s gonna deny 2020’s the fustercluck to end them all. And idk about y’all but when we were in lockdown nachos and wine got me through it. Good for the soul, bad for the body, apparently.

I know everyone has different strategies, and different paces they take it at. I’m very much in camp “slow and steady wins the race” and I don’t weigh myself out of principle. Here’s what’s been helping me, in case it helps any of you beautiful ppl out there too!

• slow and steady: because I’m looking to build sustainable habits. Went from wine and nachos 2-3xs a week, to 1, to none. I still drink but cut out nachos bc I’m lactose intolerant and it was wreaking chaos on my body. Another example would be chip consumption - down from 2 family sized bags a week to 1. Trade half your chip ration for veggies then with a soup or sandwich. Then all veggies. Save chips for your cheat day.

• know your body: I’ve opted for no dairy and no bread/wheat products, 7 days a week for the former and 6 days a week for the latter. I’ve got a super sensitive stomach and when I eat those 2 things I get bloated and tired (dairy obviously it gets way worse than that) and I can’t exercise. Calories aside cutting these things out played massively in to my NSV simply bc Im not bloated af. I’ve looked at keto (look at the results they get!) but I just don’t think that’s a sustainable or mentally healthy way for me go to about things

• you don’t need to exercise like crazy: I walk about 30k a week, use weights 3Xs a week, and do intense cardio for an hour total. Yeah, I’m sure if I increased my time on the stairs by a half hour a week I’d see results faster, but I don’t want to burn myself out and stop enjoying my time outside/at the gym. I have a whole other life outside weight loss to focus on, and I want to look forward to my gym time.

• change up your exercise routine: I’m also back to my precovid level on the stairs (!) if I want. That’s bc sometimes I opt for the lower level so I can 1) go longer in a single day, and 2) to do intervals. It seems insignificant, the small changes, but the freedom to change my routine as I see fit (pun intended lol) keeps me motivated to work out even when I’m not 100% feeling it. Instead of “I did intervals SO WELL last week - should that be my norm now?” it’s “alright what makes me feel good today. Are we going all out or are we just getting moving” - this ties in to my final point below.

• once a week cheat: I feel like I’m a little more lax with this than most people. Once a week I hang out with my friends and drink wine. That in and of itself is a cheat I know, but i also permit myself hangover day fast food (and I’ve gotten pretty good at not eating junk on wine night too! Scrambled eggs with spinach and onions/peppers is my shit). This is bc personally I don’t want to feel like I’m depriving myself of anything. I never have been nor ever will be a health nut. This is a good balance for me.

And most importantly - be kind to yourself: health is a life long journey. I did more weights than usual last week, and was only on the stairs for a total of 50mins. And you know what? Not only did I survive, I made it to one of my goals anyway.

I find people are so quick to be so hard on themselves “I really had to do that last 10mins” “I can’t believe I ate a piece of cake of a Tuesday” and it hurts your motivation instead of helping it.

Everyone knows the example of “well I’ve already eaten one piece of cake, why not just do the whole damn thing?” Instead of being hard on yourself change your mindset to “ok that was a mistake but that’s okay, how about I don’t eat the whole rest of that cake” and then when you don’t - celebrate that. Celebrate and focus on the fact that you’re changing your habits for the better. Literally every small step counts! That way you wake up the next morning like “wow, I did that! New day. Let’s be just a little bit better than yesterday” - you know you’re strong, and worth it and capable, and that you can do it.

Good luck out there friends, have a fabulous day/afternoon/evening.

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With the time change and seasonal depression, I've lost motivation but I CANNOT give up. I have to stop being so hard on myself.

Hello, all! I'm 23F, 5'2" sw 281LBS (127kg) cw ~fluctuating~ 276-279 (125-126). I started CICO and the gym September 25th. I was weighing myself every morning and was happy to see the scale was slowly moving down. But then I went to Las Vegas my 4th week in and have stopped counting calories. Being in the city a few days was so hectic and all I ate was bad, fatty food. I skipped the gym for a few days traveling and when I came back home it wasn't the same. I felt like crap for eating poorly and lost my motivation to eat better. I have continued going to the gym 5-6 days a week (30-60 min cardio) but find myself less and less motivated or energized everyday. With the time change and my depression, I feel like crap and don't even want to get out of bed. But I have to stop being so hard on myself!!! I am glad I am still going to the gym and thinking about weight loss every day. This is the highest weight I've ever been but also the most I've wanted to lose so badly. And at least I'm under my SW, even if it's just a couple pounds. If I hadn't started, I'd probably be 10 pounds higher! My birthday is in 7 days and I probably won't even dress up or do anything but hopefully next year I'm confident enough in a healthier body/mind. I gotta get back on track. I can. I will. I cannot give up. I'm going to leave this here to motivate my future self and hopefully it'll do the same for someone else! Good luck to everyone here and thank you for taking the time to read.

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