How do you know when you hit maintenance?

[melyssafaye 181]

Hi all!

I just wonder when do you you get to a place where your weight loss is done. Is this something that just happens, or do you make a choice?

I'm 9 months post vsg. HW:268 CW:168.

I've lost my 70% and met my surgeon's goal of 173, but not my personal goal of 145.

Over the past 2 months, I've been fluctuating about 3 lbs up, and back down, but not getting past 168. I'm 5'6 and really would like to lose the last 30 or so pounds.

I eat with my program and it's fine. I'm going to do the liquid diet for 5 days next week. I don't want to drastically change what I'm eating because I'm happy with it and realize that this is eating for my whole life, not a crash diet. I do low carb/ high Protein just the same as I've been doing all along.

Is this just a long stall, or can the maintenance phase sneak up on you?

Sent from my iPhone using the BariatricPal App

[Hollyhock 62]

I don't know how to answer that but congratulations on the success!

[fatontheinside 92]

I think everyone is different so this is something that you'll have to figure out for yourself. I was 220 pre-surgery and I've been steady at 125 for the last year. I had the RNY. My friend had the sleeve 1 week after me and she's consistently been 20 pounds heavier than me but we are now both maintaining for the last 10 months or so. I think that if you want to lose more, you have have to really start working out...I wouldn't necessarily eat less than you are now especially if you're comfortable with your diet. You're right...food has always been everything to us so I would stay where you are in the food area if you're good with it. Remember, this is just a tool to help get where we want to be.

Good luck and be proud of everything you've done now!

[RickM 1,747]

I suspect that it is a long stall leading into maintenance. Maintenance happens when your average daily intake equals your expenditure through living and activities. It can sneak up on some if their weight loss diet is calorically similar to their maintenance metabolism, while others will have to increase their intake to stop losing and drive themselves into maintenance.

The tricky thing here is that typically, our overall metabolism declines as we lose weight - it doesn't take as many calories to move us around all day long when we are 100, 200 or whatever pounds lighter than when we started, so our loss rate on average tends to decline over time. A diet and calorie level that worked for us well at the beginning may not be enough to get us through to the end, particularly if we increase our consumption as we progress (some can get away with that while others can't.) If you are bouncing around the same weight for the past couple of months, this indicates that your intake isn't far off from your overall metabolism - you may have a few pounds more that you can squeeze out of there, but 30 lb is very unlikely unless you significantly reduce your intake. A drop of 500 calories from where one is stable should yield a loss rate of pound per week (or 4-5 lb per month). That should give you an idea of the size of your challenge here.

There is nothing magical about a liquid diet for weight loss, other than most of the products used are very low calorie so you are dropping your calories a fair bit for a few days. One can do the same thing with a basic meat and vegetable diet - just cut the calories to the same level as the liquid program - and you will probably be more satisfied and tolerant of it. There are a number of liquid "reset" and "pouch test" diets out there that are based upon the idea that when we first had surgery we were (usually) on a liquid diet and lost like crazy for 2-3 weeks, therefore if we go back to a liquid diet we will lose like crazy again. Reality check here - those of us who never did a liquid diet also lost like crazy right after surgery, because it wasn't that liquid diet that stimulated that loss in the first place, but the dramatic drop in caloric consumption.