Maintaining Health

Transitioning from weight loss to weight maintenance is a big deal.

On paper, there isn't much difference between weight losses (caloric deficit) vs. maintaining weight (caloric maintenance) except that at the support you get to eat more calories.

People struggle a lot when they first hit their weight goal. They are not quite sure about how to maintain their weight. That's kind of what gave birth to the "low body fat challenge" that people give themselves. It allows them to continue to the weight loss journey for a reason, but that ends soon too.

The thing people struggle with most is the mindset that they are not supposed to continue what they were doing. For whatever reasons they think they have to give up calorie counting because they already hit their goal. At that point, they don't quite understand that this was a journey for life, that whatever they are doing then they had to continue doing if they wanted to maintain it.

I tried many methods to quit calorie counting as if calorie counting was this drug I was supposed to depart. Each time I leave, it felt super uneasy. I tried relying solely on the scale to maintain weight, I tried going on OMAD (one meal a day), so I could eat whatever I want and ignore tracking food, and ultimately I dabbled into intermittent fasting to test its viability without monitoring.

Every single time it felt like I had found something that worked, it would feel like something was missing. I don't know how to describe it, and it didn't feel natural.

It took me a long while to realize and accept that calorie counting could be a diet for life, as long as I was willing to treat it as such. I think it's only since a few months ago that it really settled in for me.

Maintenance, unlike weight loss, is for life. There's a lot more margin for error, there's a lot more food to be enjoyed, but it's still about figuring out a diet that you can stick to for life. It absolutely doesn't mean you get to go back to your old habits. Old habits are what got you to your past you in the first place.

It's not going to happen overnight, or weeks, or even months. It's something to work on every single day, and tweaking according to the changes in your lifestyle. Weight loss is not a period that a person has to work on and then give up. It is a way of lifestyle that a person should follow no matter what all through the days of his/her life.