I recently read a helpful forum post about maintenance, which quotes a statement
frequently used by me. This post is quoted below:

"Being fat is hard.
Losing weight is hard.
Keeping off weight is hard.
Pick your hard."

If you want to keep off the weight you lost, you can never go back to exactly the way you were before. You have to keep living a changed life.

You have to figure out what you're willing to "pay" to keep off the weight. You're not going to pay in money but you're going to pay in time & in having to consider your choices. You will likely pay in some loss of spontaneity and thoughtlessness. Others will be able to eat unthinkingly and you probably never will.

That is, of course, if you like your life at a lower weight, and you are willing to make the tradeoff to stay there.
 

                              
Online Diet Websites tend to come across as experts shining a beacon of light upon The Path to an Eternally Thin and Healthy life. However, I see myself as blindly groping about looking for a path… any path… that will lead me away from the magnetic circle that is my natural tendency to overeat into obesity.

My only expertise is my own experience, and the many hundreds of books on various food plans, diets, and exercise that I've read over my lifetime. I don't know the answer for anyone else, and there are days that I feel I'm not even close to an answer for myself.

I believe that a big part of the answer is consistent hard work, endurance, and patience. This is because this is what has brought me success in every successful area of my life, and weight-loss and maintenance of that weight-loss has not been an exception to that rule.

Diet and weight-loss and maintenance of weight-loss is ongoing hard work. I suspect that one of the reasons for the 95% overall failure rate is because people simply do not comprehend the extent of that fact. All of these marketing interests lie to us, telling us that they have the ANSWER, and if we just give them a little money, and a bit of effort for a short time, we will be cured of our overeating tendencies and become naturally thin. We are gullible because we are desperate to believe their claims.

What I have discovered is:

Being fat is hard,
Losing weight is hard,
Maintaining weight loss is hard.
Choose your hard. 

 
DietHobby is a place of encouragement and support.
I need encouragement and support as I make my way through Life's path.
This is why DietHobby exists. 

I share many of my thoughts and feelings here, in writing and in videos. 
My daily eating choices, and my behavior with food … is an ongoing part of my life. 
It is a thread that weaves its way throughout my life, 
and I look at dieting as one of my ongoing hobbies
.. which is simply a part of my total Lifestyle. 

My way of thinking is connected to my way of eating. 
I am the one who chooses what I think about. 
I am the one who decides where to put my focus. 
I am the one who has the power to direct my mind toward the positive. 

DietHobby is a way to help me do that. Part of helping myself is to share my thoughts with you. 
Perhaps you will find some of these writings and videos encouraging and supportive to you
as you travel, in your own individual way, down the path that Life has put before you. 
The way that I choose to eat, doesn't have to be the way you choose to eat.  
What works for me may be different than what works for you.  

But, perhaps you will find it helpful to take in my information,  
and shift it through your mind, accepting some things, rejecting other things. 
Blending some of the things you read and hear at DietHobby together with your own valuable truths 
might be exactly what you need to move you toward your own individual Life goals.  

DietHobby already has a great deal of content.  
You can find many things here in this website. … and as I live through the days and weeks,
I continue to think,  so More will be coming.   
Look around, get it know DietHobby, see if it is something that will fit into your support structure.
Take what you like, and leave the rest. 
                   

I've made changes to my Weight Range Maintenance Plan. 

Previously the top black "Unacceptable" area was 120 lbs and over, (now that "Unacceptable" area is 126 lbs and over); and the red "LoseWeight" area was 119-116, (now that "LoseWeight" area is 125-120 lbs)

When I grew near to my goal weight, I made a visual graphic of my plan to maintain my weight-loss, by creating a Weight Maintenance Chart much like the one shown above. This turned out to be a very effective way to set specific goal-weight-range numbers into my mind and heart.

I talk more how I did this, and why, in a previous article, "Setting A Goal Range". Read that article to see the original chart and the maintenance weights that I originally set for myself.

This graphic has been very helpful to me for the past six years, and I have worked very hard to stay within the maintenance weight ranges that I set for myself. However, this past two years, ... despite my very best efforts... I've spent most of the time hanging out inside the top red area and the top black area,and I've been unable to sustain much time at all inside my blue maintenance area.

So, I've finally accepted that my age and my activity level might never let me get and keepmy weight down as low as it was during my first few years of maintenance, so I've raised the top of my Maintenance Weight Range Plan by five lbs. I haven't changed the bottom ranges. These will remain the same because they are merely there as a reminder of the general weight guidelines for someone my height.

I fought against raising my weight range for a very long time,but have finally chosen to face my present reality, I haven't given up the struggle to get my weight back down to 115 or lower. I still hope that I can accomplish that. However, I'm tired of hanging out in my upper red and black areas. I am hoping that changing this graphic will give me an added mental push toward making the blue maintenance area my status quo again.

I've been very reluctant to make this change.  Not so much because of the actual 5 lbs,
but because of my fear that ... despite all my continued best efforts ... that my weight will continue to creep upward.

I've decided to face the truth, that my body isn't the same as it was 7 years ago. My maintenance weight has been about 5 lbs higher for the last few years,  so it's time to adjust my maintenance weight range to accurately reflect reality.  Although in a way doing this feels like admitting defeat,  it is actually a step toward success in my ongoing maintenance.

For those interested, here's a link to my latest video,
"R U a Good Guest? - Ask Grandma - Episode Forty-five".
which has now been posted here at DietHobby in the GRANDMA section,
and is located in the Ask Grandma category. 

This video was taken on the patio in my back yard.  The pink flowering tree
is a stencil painting that I painted there about ten years ago.