Maintenance - the tricky side of transition

The dictionary definition of the word maintenance is 'administered to maintain a desired condition'.

When we set ourselves weight loss goals, no matter how much or how little we have to lose, we have to become fiercely focused on those goals. Losing weight is about lifestyle change, not simply addressing one aspect such as diet and hoping that will work. You have to change your whole thinking about food,, exercise and the commitment to make the changes that will carry you through life a healthier person. It is something palpable to concentrate on and we strive to achieve that ultimate aim, watching those numbers tumble on the scale. Each pound that goes is a mini victory, how often have you felt that delicious sensation of gratification and achievement when you have had a good week and your mass diminishes further?

Maintaining

So what happens when you get there, that thing we refer to as goal. After all that hard work; calorie counting, exercise regimes, tears, self deprication at being fat in the first place. It stops. It's as if you have been in a speeding car for hundreds of miles and you apply the brakes, grinding to a halt. The target has been reached. For some, this can be daunting as you have to review how your are managing the process. There are no more visual targets, of course it is wise to keep an eye on your weight as you start maintenance ( and there on in) but those little kicks and wins you had are no more. Of course you have conceded a trouncing from the silent enemy that is obesity, you have reached a healthy weight and are no longer suffering the mental and physical tortures being fat presents. That is massive reward in itself.

It becomes about weight preservation rather than weight loss per se.

And so the journey begins

Entering maintenance was pretty scary in some respects, my focus had to shift from loss to sustain. What if I failed after all that hard work? To be realistic, I would have had to have eaten consistently for months to even get close to where I started out from but I knew that it had happened before, therefore it could happen again.

On the face of it, maintenance sounds easier than actually losing the weight in the first place.

The first 12 months of maintenance were ok in terms of maintaining my weight, I even lost a bit more and got down to 147 pounds. The running was paying dividends and assisted the weight maintenance so I was not too concerned about gaining. The energy your body uses to run is plentiful! But what with all the emotional and mental baggage I was carrying from being morbidly obese, adjusting to the new body was harder psychologically than I thought it would be.

It annoyed me that people treated me differently, just because I looked more 'acceptable' in the eyes of society. In truth I was being treated differently because I was behaving differently. I was confident, chatty, excited about life again and those who came into contact me were picking up on that. I still expected cruel comments and judgemental looks but they did not happen, it was almost as if I could not switch that part of my brain off. It was still playing catch up with the changes and was constantly on alert. My abuse radar was always primed.

The attention I was getting from the opposite sex perplexed me initially, I had gone from being invisible at best to men taking notice. I did not and still do not find it comfortable when a man makes it known that he finds me attractive. It should be a compliment but the stubborn part of me feels slightly perturbed that they are looking at me for one reason and one reason only. I guess I was still hanging on to the memories of before where I was ridiculed or insulted. Those scars run deep, deeper that I could have imagined.

I think I sound a bit cynical, even negative but the benefits of my hard work were far more plentiful. I would never want to distract from those.