A member of a forum I frequent left me the following message:

You have a great website there.
It's very interesting to read the perspective of one of the exceptions,
who has lost a large amount of weight and kept it off.
I love your honesty about how little you have to eat to avoid regaining.
But I also find it quite scary!
I find it very difficult to imagine myself eating like you
(in terms of calorie intake and portion size) for the rest of my life.
It worries me that the amount I should eat to maintain
is actually less than the amount I'm currently eating to lose weight.
No wonder maintenance is difficult for people who have been very big!

It IS scarey how little I need to eat to maintain in the normal weight range.
Those weight charts that connect calorie needs to bodyweight
are inaccurate for a great many people...including me.

One thing that people often don't get .... is that THE REALLY SCAREY THING
is how little my body needs in order to maintain my weight ANYWHERE...
even in the morbid obesity weight range....

I didn't get to eat everything I wanted to eat whenever I wanted to eat it,
and still not gain, even at 220 or even 250 lbs.
As a short, older, sedentary woman I was only averaging around 1600 - 1800 calories a day
during that couple of years when I gained from the 160s up into the 190s.
AND my weight was still slowly climbing.

Evidence indicates that is very difficult for me to maintain at any weight.
I can choose to work to maintain in the "normal" range,
OR
I can choose to work to maintain well inside the "obesity" range.

Since I have to work hard anyway, to maintain anywhere,
If it is at all possible,
I'd rather do what it takes to weigh in the normal range.

                                                       
A fresh start?

Recently I've been thinking about the concept of a "fresh start" as it relates to dieting, weight-loss, and maintenance of weight-loss.

My own belief is that every diet works for someone, and every possible type of eating is actually a diet… including all of the intuitive eating, "non-diets" etc. Just SAYING it isn't a diet, doesn't change it's nature. As far as I'm concerned, despite all of the factors like total amount eaten, timing of eating, or micronutrients eaten, if it's food, and if it goes into one's body, it's some type of diet.

Most people begin each new weight-loss diet, "healthy" diet, or new food plan, with some emotional energy, hope, and enthusiasm. Over time, Reality intrudes, and that energy grows dim, and sometimes fades away. At that point, many of these people "take a break" from their diet, or food plan, and return to their former eating habits. This break can be for a short time or a long time, but almost all of them will eventually decide to again alter their ongoing way of eating, telling themselves they are getting "a fresh start".

My personal choice, at present, is to change maintenance food plans frequently…but without allowing any "free" space for overeating, between plans. For the past 8 years I've recorded all of my food every day into a computer software program, no matter what food, how much food, or when that food was eaten. This has been my bottom line consistency factor.

My take is that there needs to be a balance between consistency, patience, endurance, and effort and keeping our daily experiences from getting "stale". "Stale" is the opposite of "fresh", and means tasteless or unpalatable from age; tedious from familiarity, or impaired in vigor or effectiveness.

Although we all share common factors as human beings, each of us is an individual, with genetic, cultural, and behavioral history differences. Weight-loss is hard for almost every overweight or obese person, and maintenance is even harder yet.

The science behind why we weigh what we weigh is hugely complicated. The number of physiological factors governing our ability to maintain, lose or gain weight is staggering. Leptin, leptin resistence, ghrelin, insulin, insulin resistence, and a whole host of other chemicals and chemical reactions in our bodies come into play.

Here's an interesting article I recently read in Big Fat Facts, written by a long-time weight-loss maintainer that talks about the tremendous problems involved in success with losing and maintaining weight.

The Truth About Long-Term Diet Success

An oft-quoted but rarely cited statistic is that diets ...

One dieting issue to be faced is the question of whether or not blind restriction is a personally sustainable, long-term strategy.

My own experience says that it isn't, 
and there are many "dieting experts" who say that blind restriction,......
...the belief that if you're trying to manage weight you simply don't eat
nutritionally bereft, but hedonically wonderful foods, (i.e. junk foods), …
...........is one of the reason why there are so many failures in dieting.

For me, personally, thinking that I'm going to live a life where I'm not allowed to take pleasure from food, is unrealistic. I'm working toward the healthiest life that I can enjoy, not the healthiest life that I can tolerate.  This means I work toward eating the smallest amount of bad-for-you-indulgence that I need to enjoy my life, but ….for me…that amount is definitely not "none".

Thus far, all of my efforts to do otherwise have always wound up being an extremely temporary state of being. I admire people who are able to get themselves to successfully function with food in this manner, and I'm open to the possibility, but after a lifetime of dealing with overeating, obesity, and experimenting with every different form of dieting I've ever heard about, I feel fairly certain I'm never going to be one of them.

Here's an amusing video about the difficulties involved in many common food restrictions.

I find the information in this graphic: "Serving Sizes Around the World"
to be interesting enough to share here.