Happy New Year

New Year’s Eve is a great time to reflect on the issue of Maintenance. Today I’m posting an article by one of the very few bloggers who have continued sharing information about their weight-loss and maintenance efforts for an extended time after achieving a large weight loss and getting close to their weight-loss goal.

In January 2009 Kate began dieting, and this summer, 2012, her weight was about 120 lbs lighter that when she started. I’ve enjoyed reading her blog over the years.

She says she used “no pills, no rules, no plans, no shots, no surgery, no supplements.” …that she “ate less, ate better food, found the joy in exercise, and learned to appreciate (her) body.”

Although her diet efforts, as a vegetarian, were not the same as mine, the content of her writings indicate that we have many Thoughts in common…including that people aren’t all the same, and there are many different ways to lose weight.

Kate tells us that she is “just a normal woman who got tired of yo-yo dieting and finally decided to change (her) lifestyle for good.” She is not a nutritionist, personal trainer, or medical professional. She doesn’t work for any company, endorse any diet plan, and isn’t paid to promote any product.

  At the end of the article, I will comment further.

Weight & Weight Loss, I’m Over It. 
                                      by Kate on 12/8/12  in "This is Not a Diet …It’s my life"

I don't weigh myself anymore. It's been about a month since I did. This may come to a surprise to people who have been following me and know I used to be a daily weigher.

Those who really know me should not be surprised though, because if there's one thing I will always continue to embrace, it's change. I know that in order to continue to grow, I will sometimes change my mind.

So what happened? A couple of things. The first thing was my injury the day after Labor Day, when I fell and suffered a concussion. My weight all the sudden meant less to me. It seemed so silly and ridiculous the amount of time I spent ensuring I always stayed in the same range after losing 120 pounds 2 years ago. Every day, weighing myself, adjusting what I ate, adjusting what exercise I did... it seemed reasonable at the time. It doesn't now. When I was really feeling shitty from the concussion, I felt like it was clear which things were important and which weren't. Spending a lot of time thinking about my weight lost importance, it went into the same category as stressing out about my job. Not that it's simple stop thinking about tho...

Maintenance is KEEPING the Weight Off. We are almost at the end of 2012, and I’ve been reviewing my own personal 2012 “diet/way-of-eating/lifestyle” Efforts and Results.

My Eating Behavior wasn’t Perfect, and my Results were even further away from Perfect. 

I’d like to be about 10 lbs lighter, and during 2012, despite many, many Efforts, I didn’t achieve the Results that I believe that my eating behavior deserved.

I was unsuccessful at losing the weight my body regained over the previous 4 years. However, Today, in the last week of 2012, I’m only about one lb higher than I was during the first week of 2012, which actually is excellent maintenance.

Behavior I’m proud of in 2012 is ... that I continued working on my weight-loss maintenance for another 12 months. I did my very best to eat in a way that would cause weight-loss and keep me from regaining my weight. I entered all my food into my computer food journal, DietPower. I entered my weights, and kept additional charts & records updated even when I felt sick-to-death of the weight Results I kept seeing.

I’ve continued to do my best to make Dieting an enjoyable Hobby.  Some of the ways I’ve done this is to continually search for new information; read diet-related books; try out new recipes, and write and make videos here at DietHobby.

I’ve now maintained my current weight-loss for SEVEN years, and am now starting on year EIGHT.  As stated in the article below, avoiding obesity requires “lifelong management”, and to achieve continued Maintenance success, I can never stop my Efforts. 

There have been many days when I got tired of the whole thing, and wanted to live “normally”, but I am a “Reduced Obese” person. A person with a disability like amputed legs will always have to make “lifestyle” adjustments, and I am in the same boat. I can never expect to handle food the way a “naturally thin” person does. My own experience has taught me that eating like a “normal” person will put my body back into morbid obesity. 

“The only weight loss that matters
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