So a question for all you vets... amazingly, I'm one pound away from my "conservative" goal. I can still lose another 20 pounds or so and be at a healthy weight but I just kind of started wondering... what do I do when I don't want to lose anymore? Honestly, losing hasn't been very difficult for me. I'm an all out Protein girl, very few carbs, still eating tiny meals and feeling satisfied, so I can keep up this style of eating, no problem.

How did you know when you hit the weight you wanted to maintain and what did you change eating wise to stop losing and maintain instead?

Ginger

Hi Ginger and a huge congratulations on your success!! Great job!!

I went into my weight loss journey with the idea that my body would tell me when it was at the weight it wanted to be. I never set a goal weight. Intentionally avoided forming any expectation of how long it would/could take. After averaging just slightly under 1300 calories/day for fourteen months, my weight loss slowed to a crawl and eventually just stopped. After several weeks at the same weight, I knew I had arrived at my destination.

Then I had exactly the same question you have - now what? Seemed like a good question to ask my surgeon. She told me that 1) she did not want me to lose any more weight (BMI is/was 22.9) and 2) she recommended about 1800 calories/day for weight maintenance. I felt that jumping from 1300 calories/day to 1800 calories/day was more than a little uncomfortable. So I decided to work my way up to 1600 calories. I changed my calorie goal to 1450 and maintained that for about two months. All the while checking my weight on a daily basis. I had established a window of 151-156 pounds that I wanted to maintain. To be honest, I was somewhat surprised that even though I had increased my average calorie intake, my weight remained in that window. So after a couple of months, I increased it again to 1600 calories. And once again, there was no change in my weight - for about four or five months. In fact I thought I had found my "number" - 1600 calories.

But after four or five months at 1600, I started struggling to keep my weight above my 151 minimum. To this day I have no idea why. My diet had not changed. My calorie goal had not changed. My exercise had not changed. But my weight was dropping. So I increased my calorie goal again - this time to 1750. I have been at that daily goal for over a year now and my weight has been rock solid within my window. My weight this morning was 152.2.

I should note that I am an avid fan of maintaining a food log. I've been logging in My Fitness Pal for over three years. This is a good example of just one of the many benefits of logging. No log is absolutely accurate no matter how hard we may try but I do everything I can to make my entries as accurate as possible. My log was priceless in helping me make the calorie adjustments and then monitor the results in terms of my weight. Without my log, calorie intake would have been a guess. An educated guess, but a guess all the same. Logging is a huge confidence booster!

Congratulations again!!

Edited November 14, 201411 yr by DLCoggin

DL Thank you for your post. I have written to you before about this. Your information is so very helpful. At 18 months I have now been at my goal weight for nearly six months and have been successfully maintaining doing exactly what you are doing. I still panic when I see the scale climb a pound or two, but I am always able to bring it back down in a couple days. MFP is the key to maintaining. I wish there was as much support for those of us in this phase of the journey as there is for those at the beginning. Thank you for providing that!

Carol - wow! Talk about success stories! You are like the poster person for gastric bypass!

It is unfortunate that so many of the vets drop off the forum after reaching their goals. I don't post replies as often as I once did (you can only answer the same question so many times and then it's time for others to take over) but I still monitor the forum on a regular basis and try to help out where I can. I firmly believe that, like a person that has the disease of alcoholism, I will always have the disease of obesity. Whether you're one year post-op or ten years post-op, managing your weight is a life long endeavor. Reading the victories, challenges, and lessons learned by others is an invaluable tool for maintaining my commitment. You never stop learning.

Have a great day!!

Thanks @DLCoggin... I'm currently around 800 calories a day regularly, so I'd have a LONG way to go to even get up to 1200/day. Maybe I'll start now just increasing and getting up to around 1000/day even though I could still lose more and be healthy. I've been focused on BMI but I'm going to have a body fat analysis done, too, next week and try to set a goal based on a % body fat. I know they are closely related but I've been working out with weights pretty hard so I might want to be at a little higher weight than if I weren't.

I think a little fear has crept in that I won't know when or how to stop. I already feel a little bony in places (wrist, elbows, collar bones) and I don't feel like my brain has caught up with what the body looks like, so I'm not feeling like I can trust my eyes to tell me when I'm where I shoudl be. And the loose skin around the belly always stands out to me... no matter how much I lose and lift and plank, I'm not gonna have concave, six-pack abs.

I'm going to meet with the nutritionist again and get this body fat analysis done and try to see if I can come up with a healthy number that's specific for me and then just try to land within about 10 pounds of it somewhere.

Thanks for your help again -- I'm sure I'll be back asking more questions!

You've obviously already done a great job Ginger and I think you have a great plan for moving forward into the maintenance stage. I really believe that gradual calorie increases followed by monitoring your body's response in terms of weight gain or loss is the way to go. BMI is a less than ideal measure of healthy weight, especially for those with a higher than average amount of muscle mass. I think your plan to get the body fat analysis is a terrific idea. I've never had one but would be very interested in your experience and what you learn from it.

The rapid weight loss part of the journey was incredibly exciting and rewarding. But the maintenance stage was, for me, where the real fun began. It's one thing to prove to yourself that you can lose weight. It's quite another to discover that you really have made the all important lifestyle changes. That you can eat quite a "normal" diet and still maintain your weight. That you can manage your weight instead of it managing you. That you really, truly, absolutely are in control and lovin' the new you!!

Edited November 24, 201411 yr by DLCoggin

This is such a useful conversations for those of us who are not yet veterans!

I'm at 7.5 months. I have had the conversation with my PA about stopping my weight loss where I am now despite what the charts and BMI calculators say. Honestly I don't want to be any thinner. I can fit into the pair of jeans I wore when I met my husband in 1985. (boy are they ugly!) I really don't want to lose 10 more pounds just because the BMI calculator says I need to in order not to be in the "overweight" range. She said my body will decide but I can help it a little.

My PA suggested more calories in liquid such as a fruit smoothie or Protein shake (I have not used them since week 3). Also a healthy calorie dense snack on days I work out. But I'm still dropping .5 a week and I have given up the hope of wearing my size 12 pants through the winter.