Weight maintenance is so much harder than it used to be!

Ditched the 2000 calorie a day diet for a couple of months and managed to stay at 210. Then on the 4th of July I started back again. This morning I was at 207. So down 3 lbs in 11 days. Slow, but better than a sharp stick in the eye.
 

Someone...was it you @Trade? .. mentioned not wanting to feel hungry. Honestly, I think that is something that sabotages an otherwise effective diet. When I get hungry it’s a lot harder to control what I eat. I tend to grab something that is easy and quick, with the downside that it’s often high in calories. And let’s face it, for a woman, or at least THIS woman, it’s a lot harder to not feel hungry on a 1500 cal a day diet than it is on a 2500 cal a day diet!

I use several strategies to combat being hungry. I eat frequently. I don’t go serval hours between eating, otherwise when I finally do eat a meal, even if I’ve managed to control my hunger up to that point, I will almost certainly overeat/go over my allotted calories for that meal.

I also use “free”’foods a lot to add bulk and quantity to a meal without adding extra calories. Things like no salt French cut green beans canned or frozen, or several hands ful of baby spinach, or a really large salad with low/0 cal dressing. They are all things that by themselves have a very mild taste so they don’t impact the flavor of what I’m eating, but still bulk a meal out with little to no calories, and make me feel full.

When I’ve been ravenous, I’ve been known to dump an entire can of green beans into my portion controlled bowl of stew, or chili, or add it as a side to my boiled chicken and steamed broccoli, or I will lightly sauté half a bag of spinach and mix it in with my fettuccine Alfredo, or spaghetti and red sauce. Or jist throw it in the bottom or The bowl and spoon the hot pasta over if, effectively wilting it down to a quarter of its original size without impacting the flavor.
 
I have been on a diet just about my whole life, well, at least since I was in the Marines. I was just a bit overweight when I enlisted, but I lost that and more during boot camp. That’s when I learned that I didn’t need all that I had been eating. Now, I just exercise and avoid things that I know will put on weight, or what are called empty calories.
 
I dropped 40 pounds over roughly a year. May of 2018-2019. But....I was living on, eggs one piece of toast for breakfast, soup,salad for supper. I cut out just about all beer, & snacks. Frankly I got tired of it all, recently started allowing myself meat, sausage for breakfast, [fish,chicken] for supper, and a beer or two in the evening . I have crept up 4 pounds since this May.

It's a known fact that our metabolism slows with aging .... I think mine has stopped altogether. And with the arthritis being so damn bad .... it's next to impossible to exercise.
 
rgp said:
I dropped 40 pounds over roughly a year. May of 2018-2019. But....I was living on, eggs one piece of toast for breakfast, soup,salad for supper. I cut out just about all beer, & snacks. Frankly I got tired of it all, recently started allowing myself meat, sausage for breakfast, [fish,chicken] for supper, and a beer or two in the evening . I have crept up 4 pounds since this May.

It's a known fact that our metabolism slows with aging .... I think mine has stopped altogether. And with the arthritis being so damn bad .... it's next to impossible to exercise.
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Don't give up, sounds like a little adjustment is all you need to maintain your loss.

Try cutting back to a mini beer or two! 🙂
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Good luck!!!:)
 
After 15 days of 2000 calories a day I am down 5 lbs. to 205. That makes 10 lbs down since about 6 months ago.
 
23 days into my 2000 calorie a day diet and I'm still at 205. I've been stuck there for 8 days now. But I'm down 10 from where I was 4 months ago and down 25 from my all time high of 230 lbs which was about 10 years ago.
 
I've been weighing every morning. Three or four years ago I dropped forty-six pounds, then quit my diet. I've creeped bnack up almost six pounds.
I'm still over weight but no longer obese. I want to drop another four or five pounds but don't want to crash diet like before. I weigheed in this morning
at 172.8. The is exactly what i weighed on June 15 th. I've gone up as high as 177.0 during the past month and now back and now back down to 172.8.
It's been a roller coaster. I'm going to continue weighing and recording that weight for a while. Seems to be the only way I can stay on top of things.
 
I bought this silver teapot to the left side which is my avatar at an old junk store. I thought a genie might live inside, or might have been
inside for a long time and would grant me a few wishes if only someone would let it out or allow it to speak of some olden time or exploits
the genie might remember. That does not seem to be the case. Its like talking to my plants. I don't know if they hear me or not or if they can
hear me and are saying to one another, "Duh, what's with this dude?" Yet strange things do happen. I'm going to keep trying. Never know
when something will come along and give you an advantage.
 
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Ronni said:
All my life I've been slender, never had to worry about what I ate, gained under 25 pounds each pregnancy (5 kids) which I quickly shed, and had no weight issues at all, just fluctuated between 130 and 135. I'm 5' 8 1/2 so that was a good weight for me. Don't hate me for all that, because it didn't last....menopause hit OMG!!! :mad:

I was close to 15 pounds heavier before it really hit home that this wasn't just my normal fluctuation. Another 15 pounds before I realized that focusing on losing the weight wasn't going to cut it, I first of all needed to just stop the gain!!! Another 10 pounds before I ended up tipping the scale at 175 pounds before I managed to even stop gaining! At least it was evenly distributed so I didn't look quite as heavy as I was.

Tried every current diet out there to lose the weight, to no avail. Lose a bit, gain it back. Finally, after doing much research about what was happening to my body, I finally realized that I had to evolve a "diet" <way of eating> that I could maintain for the rest of my life, because I wasn't ever again going to be able to be eat the way I used to, and I needed to figure out a way to eat that I could actually sustain for the rest of my life, once the weight was gone, and that would facilitate a slow and steady loss rather than the dramatic plummet I was originally going for.

With much chagrin because it was the very LAST thing I wanted to do and the thing I had avoided up till this point, I started counting calories. Ugh. I found an app (My fitness Pal) that made that chore less onerous. This was back in 2014. For the next year I slowly lost the weight, averaging 2 - 3 pounds a month, going from that original 175 pounds to a much more comfortable 145 pounds....still 10 pounds more than I'd averaged for so many years, but my body just kinda leveled out at that point, the weight loss stopped, my joints stopped hurting, I could move easily and quickly again, and I realized that unless I wanted to cut calories more drastically (and I didn't) this was now maintenance for me.

I've maintained that general weight since. I fluctuate some (143 - 147) but it stays in that general range. Or rather, it WAS staying in that range. I've noticed this last 6 months that it's gotten harder to maintain it. I'm eating the same, maintaining the same level of physical activity, but I'm struggling more and more with staying under 147. It's very frustrating.

My question to all is how have you maintained an acceptable weight? Are you walking, going to the gym, lifting, doing Pilates, what? I have to change something because what has worked for me this last 4 years is no longer as effective.

What's worked for you?
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Sounds like you just described me. I was fit all my life stayed around 130- 135 then started gaining during menapause up to 175.
I played softball up to 50. And always danced.
I lost all my extra about 15 yr ago. Didn't firm up as much but did get down and stayed 140-145 since.
I eat all day long, small meals and snacks and don't allow my stomach to stretch. I'm not much of a meat eater at all. Lots of fruits,veggies and nuts.
 
After 11 straight mornings at 205 I finally broke through the plateau and was 204 this morning. I have an analog scale similar to the one pictured below. So I don't get a readout in tenths of a lb. I always round it to the nearest pound. And I always round up when in doubt.

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One of those hmmm good point conversations.

While cranking out some miles on the elliptical a friend of mine was saying how great it is to be fit. But sad that he wouldn't be able to hear the compliments on fitness in his coffin. Made me think of all the times at funerals I've heard he or she looks good.
 
Down another LB. to 203 this morning. So after 11 straight days at 205, I've dropped 2 lbs. in 2 days. Glad to have that positive feedback. It was getting a bit discouraging.
 
Trade said:
Down another LB. to 203 this morning. So after 11 straight days at 205, I've dropped 2 lbs. in 2 days. Glad to have that positive feedback. It was getting a bit discouraging.
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Trade, what are you doing differently this time around with the 2000cals per day diet that you weren't doing before when it wasn't working for you? If I could eat 2000cals a day and just maintain I'd be in my glory.

Edited: After rereading this thread I see it was a 2500+ cals a day that wasn't working for you. Glad you can lose weight on 2000cals a day, I can't and I exercise every day.
 
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203 again this morning. That's in the morning after I have peed but before I've had anything to eat or drink. I had a doctor's appt later that morning. So after breakfast, I put on shorts, T-shirt, shoes, and put my wallet, keys and flip phone in my shorts and weighed again. I was between 209 and 210. Then when I got to the doctor's their scale had me at 206.4. So when I got home I weighed myself again dressed the same way and it was between 209 and 210 again. So either my scale is high, or the doctor's office one is low.

I'll go by mine since it's higher.

There are some things I like to be conservative about. Politics not being one of them.
 
Jumped back up to 203 this morning. And I didn't stray from my 2000 calorie a day diet. I suppose things like this are to be expected on occasion.

On a positive note I saw this on the net yesterday.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/endocrinology/generalendocrinology/44843
Adults over 65 at the high end of the healthy body mass index (BMI) range were at lower risk of mortality, and those at the low end were at highest risk, according to a recent meta-analysis.

The association between all-cause mortality and BMI created a U-shaped curve with a broad base (P-nonlinearity <0.001). The "nadir of the curve for BMI and mortality was between 24.0 and 30.9, with the lowest risk being between 27.0 and 27.9 (HR 0.90, 95% CI 0.88-0.92)," wrote Caryl A. Nowson, PhD, of Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, and her co-authors, in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
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So apparently for us older people the sweet spot for longevity is a BMI between 27 and 27.9, which would be between 193 and 200 lbs for me at 5-11. That's a heck of a lot better than having to get it under 25 which would mean I would need to be at 178 or less. :)
 

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