I am now in my 8th maintenance year.
This morning the scale says I'm 122.4 lbs (BMI = 23.9)

 To see what Maintenance is like for me. Click the links below:  

About Me

Running Down the Up Escalator

"He was born on the finish line, so he thinks he won the race."

This quote is So VERY applicable to naturally thin people,.... and also to those people who have never lived well inside the border of Obesity,.... who give weight-loss advice to those of us who are personally living with the issue of Obesity.

While this quote amuses me, I find it important to never lose sight of this TRUTH:
Whatever method one chooses for weight-loss, with regards to issues of weight-loss and maintenance of that weight-loss, there is NO Finish Line.

At this point I consider weight-loss Advice from people who have not personally spent considerable time in the state of Obesity …no matter how "well-meaning" that advice may be … to be uninformed, ignorant chatter, which I find tiresome, offensive, and unwelcome. 

Much of the Conventional Wisdom one hears repeated again and again, year after year, decade after decade,…including what is currently taught to medical professionals via nutritional textbooks... originated from Marketing Interests, and that information isn't helpful to resolve our obesity issues.

We are all different and there is no one-size-fits-all, BUT….I do feel certain that: Whatever one does to lose weight must be continued FOREVER in order to maintain that weight-loss.

                        
A common MYTH is the idea that
…with enough effort…,
it is possible for everyone to be able
to reach the same goals.

However,
not all goals are reachable
for all people.

The existence of this Myth tends to be overlooked or forgotten when it comes to weight and what our bodies can accomplish.

As a result of this blindness or memory loss, overweight or obese people are wrongfully perceived as morally inferior and weak and lazy. Efforts to Diet become internalized “attempts at redemption.”

Our culture contains an enormous Diet Industry. This is a particular form of economic and commercial activity involving the marketing of food, equipment, and drugs etc. as well as the marketing of information, and services from “experts”.

The term Diet Industry “Experts” involves a wide range of information givers, which includes “successful dieters”; trainers; dietitians; nutritionists; therapists, doctors and other medical professionals; hospitals; drug companies; scientists; educators; authors; publishers; journalists; politicians; and various organizations of all types, including “health care” organizations.

Unfortunately, a close look at the Diet Industry shows that even successfully following any Diet, … even those diets that we choose to call: a “Lifestyle Change”, a “Way-of-Eating” Plan, a “non-diet” plan, … doesn’t really bring us a permanent Solution for long-term weight-control.

However, long-term weight-control has never been a requirement or even a primary goal of the Diet Industry, nor the motivation behind it. Any study of the Diet Industry shows that it is a “triumph of capitalist success in selling promises to desperate people”.

One of the ways the Diet Industry sustains itself is by subtly connecting people to “ideals” of body-weight – even though those ideals are unattainable or unsustainable for the vast majority of the population.

 A Yorkshire Ter...

I recently made changes to my Weight Range Maintenance Plan.

Previously the top black "Unacceptable" area was 126 lbs and over,
       (now the "Unacceptable" area is 130 lbs and over);
and the red "LoseWeight" area was 125-120,
       (now the "LoseWeight" area is 129-126 lbs)

The use of a visual image is an effective way to set specific goal-weight-range numbers into my mind and heart. I tell about how I created this graphic, and why, in a previous article, "Setting A Goal Range". 
See that article to see the original chart and the maintenance weights that I originally set for myself.

Over time I've adjusted the graphic to reflect my current realities.  See "Change in my Weight Range Maintenance Plan" for my previous changes to these numbers and the reason for making them. 

During this entire past year, despite consistent and continual ongoing low-calorie eating, together with keeping accurate daily records of my food intake in the computer food journal DietPower,  my weight has refused to drop down to my former maintenance levels. 

My body will not allow me to be as active here in my late 60s, and it also appears to need a great deal LESS food than it did in past years. Therefore I am again changing my Weight Range Maintenance Plan to reflect my current reality.

  See "Records: My Past 8 Years" for a detailed understanding of the relationship between my food-intake and my body-weight.  I am still keeping these type of records, and one of these days, I will do another post with updated information.

       I enjoy reading about many different people and their individual Diets, and am frequently interested, entertained, and/or inspired by them. Many of them like to avoid labeling their eating style a “Diet”. Some of them use terms like - Healthy eating / way-of-eating / lifestyle / non-diet.

This is merely a Semantic Difference, because EVERYTHING THAT INVOLVES EATING is by dictionary-definition a “Diet”. Even “overeating” involves a Diet.

A great many people choose to associate and attach negative connotations to the word, “Diet”, however, this is merely a psychological prejudice, and it doesn’t change the fact that the word “Diet” is an accurate label for EVERY TYPE of eating style. Diet is the label that I personally choose to use when I discuss the issues of eating.


I use DietHobby as a digital scrapbook.

See the ARCHIVES which are full of writings that entertain, inform, and interest me.  I frequently review them for personal encouragement and inspiration.

Today DietHobby features a recent article by a young woman, Kate (K-8), who first Blogged about her large weight loss, and now Blogs about having a “healthy” self-image and “healthy” lifestyle.

Her weight-loss appears to be due to the fact that she began eating less by adopting a vegetarian diet, that is relatively free of refined sugars and starches, together with quite an active exercise “lifestyle”.

At a height of 5' 9", she weighed 287 lbs in Jan 2009 and dropped to a low of 161 lbs in September 2011. Her records show that in maintenance, she bounced between and 164 lbs and 177 lbs between November 2011 and April 2012. Her last recorded weight of 168 lbs was in July 2012.  On October 7, 2012 she posted that her current weight was around 175 and that she was now thinking that her "initial goal of 180 lbs was the right one." She included a picture of herself in that Oct 2012 post which shows her size as larger than her 2011 picture (see below) but smaller than her 2013 picture.

After that time, she stopped weighing, and adopted the principles of the diet book: Health at Every Size (2010) by Linda Bacon.  From reviewing Kate's Blogs and Facebook posts, and using my own maintenance knowledge, my best guess is that she is currently maintaining her body weight somewhere near the 190 to 200 lb range.

I wrote an reflective article this past New Year’s Eve that included a previous article by Kate about her change of maintenance style, see: