Going for another year of Weight-Loss Maintenance
I reached my size "normal" weight-loss goal 8 years ago,
I am now in my 9th year of working to maintain my body at a "normal" size.

There’s quite a lot of online information about weight-loss available. But almost nothing about long-term maintenance of that weight-loss. One could conclude that people who have successfully maintained a large weight-loss for 5 plus years simply lose interest in the process and move on to other interests.  However, this doesn’t appear to be the most likely conclusion.

 First, all available research indicates that less than 5% of all successful dieters actually maintain lost weight for two years after a large weight-loss.  If one chose to use the numbers of the National Weight Loss Registry (of which I am a member), this total number would be a fraction less than 1%.

Next, two years is not really an exceptionally long time.  When I see someone who reports success at weight-loss, I mentally say… “Yeah, come talk to me in 5 years … or 8 years.”

People losing weight tend to post frequently and make themselves highly visible.  People gaining weight tend not to report that fact.  Almost no one who has a very-large weight-loss, reports their maintenance numbers after the first few years of maintenance.  

The highly-visible, online personalities who blog about their large weight-losses, tend to disappear a year or two after their success.  I’ve followed a few of these bloggers with interest as they lost weight, thinking perhaps THIS person will be an exception… that perhaps THIS ...

This is an interesting concept, that I initially applied to the weight-loss struggle.

There are eating behaviors that will lead to weight-gain, and eating behaviors that tend to lead to weight-loss.

I suppose if I apply this motivational picture to that concept, the uphill path requires the most effort, so weight-loss eating behavior would be the uphill route, and weight-gain the down-hill path. However, this does involves a directional problem in that it assigns  UP to weight-down, and DOWN to weight-up.

Then I thought more about it.

When applied to the weight-loss struggle, "Staying where you are" implies neither losing or gaining weight ... i.e.. maintaining the status quo... by choosing to stay put, and choosing not to follow either path. 

Will opting out of the dieting struggle allow an obese person to maintain her body at its highest weight? without further gain? Perhaps.

But opting-out, intuitive-type follow-the-body's-signals eating,  fails to bring this result to a "reduced obese" person.  The body of a "reduced obese" person will ordinarily drive that person's weight back up to its highest set point.  ...  which is not their "normal" weight (before they began yo-yo dieting up to morbid obesity in adulthood),  but usually their previous highest weight (plus a few additional pounds for survival security).  I only wish that  it was possible to "stay where I am" without the active effort that it takes me to refuse to follow the signals that my own body provides me regarding eating behaviors.

After many years of obesity, for the past 9+ years, I've been maintaining a large weight-loss ONLY by a sustained and conscious effort to resist my own body's natural signals.  Even when my food choice behavior involves eating ONLY "reasonable" amounts of  non-processed, whole "real" foods,  my "reduced obese" body continues to provide ongoing signals which are designed to cause me to eat more food than my body will burn, and ... despite additional movement and exercise... will dial back my metabolism as much as it needs to in order to accomplish weight-gain.

My 5'0" body wants to weigh 271+ lbs, and I am involved in  a continual struggle to keep that from happening. I've learned through many years of  trial and effort that there is no "staying" where I am weight-wise without constant effort.  For an accurate weight-maintenance metaphor see: Running Down the UP Escalator.