I created a Weight Range Maintenance Chart
in order to make my maintenance weight goals clearly visible. 
This is my Current Chart. 

Here is a scale photo of my current weight. 

I have been successfully maintaining a very large weight-loss for many years.  You can find my history in the ABOUT ME section which contains a great many links to detailed weight and calorie charts.

I reached my goal weight of 115 pounds in January 2006, and since that time I’ve been making ongoing, consistent, diligent efforts to maintain my weight near that number.

I work to keep my weight within a certain number range, rather than at an individual “goal weight” number. 

I find this necessary because my body has frequent large weight bounces due to salt/water/waste issues. 

Despite my best efforts, during any one-month period, my daily weight tends to bounce back and forth inside a 5 to 8 pound range.

For the past 12 years, I’ve been able to keep these bounces between 115 and 135 pounds. 

On occasion however, my weight has BRIEFLY been as much as 10 pounds below and 5 pounds above that basic bounce range.

The yearly weight chart posted here shows my very lowest yearly weight during each of the past 12 years.

In order to demonstrate that the increases in these yearly lowest weights were NOT due to periods of inattention or a lack of effort, I’m also posting a corresponding yearly calorie chart showing my average daily calories during each of these passing years. 

I’ll be writing more about this issue in an further article on the subject of Biological Adaptation to Weight Loss and Maintenance.

My current Weight Range Maintenance Chart shown at the top of this article is a modification and simplification of this previous chart. 

During my 12 year maintenance period, although I’ve kept the Basic weight-range maintenance chart format, I’ve made several modifications to it.

If interested, you can read about it in the following articles.

Setting a Goal Weight Range
Change in my Weight Range Maintenance Plan
Weight Range Maintenance Plan Changes Again

You can also find further charts and detailed information about my weights and my food intake in the BLOG CATEGORY Status Updates.

 
                
This article "hits the nail on the head" in the way it accurately describes my own personal experience, as well as what I’ve witnessed for years while watching the experiences of others.

It contains one of most accurate analogies for Weight-loss and Maintenance that I’ve ever heard.

Some might find it depressing, but here in my 8th year (now starting my 12th year) of maintaining a very large weight-loss, I find it encouraging and positive to hear a medical professional, who is an expert in obesity, speak the unvarnished Truth.

Despite the fact that this Truth is rather unpleasant, and isn’t something we’re ever going to hear from Marketing Interests… (which includes most doctors and nutritionists) …. Facing it, Understanding it, and Accepting it, can be very helpful.

Running Down the Up Escalator 
                 By Dr. Ayra Sharma, M.D. (a Canadian Obesity Specialist)

One of the games I used to play as a kid was to run Down the UP escalator.

To get to the bottom, I had to run faster than the escalator was moving up. If I ran any slower, the escalator would gradually but steadily take me back to the top.

In fact, even to just stay half-way down, I’d have to keep running at about the speed the escalator was moving up. If I stopped running even for a second, I’d be moving up again.

As you may guess, I am using this analogy, to illustrate the challenge of losing weight and keeping it off.

The escalator represents all the complex neuroendocrine responses to weight loss that will always want to take you back to the top – the only way to reach the bottom or to even maintain your place half-way down is to keep running.

Alas, in real life, the weight-loss escalator is even trickier. For one, there is no real bottom – i.e. no matter how fast you run, you will never reach the bottom and be able to simply get off. No matter how far down the escalator you manage to get, you are still running on the escalator and it will keep moving you back up to the top the minute you stop running.

But things get even more depressing, because, the further down the escalator you get, the faster it runs. This means that the further down the escalator you manage to get – the harder you have to keep running to just stay where you are.

Or, in other words, when you start from the top, the escalator is running relatively slowly and you may easily manage to get down the first 5 steps. But as you go down, the escalator picks up speed and so, if you just keep up running with the speed you started at, you may not even manage to hold your place 5 steps down.

And, to get to 10 steps down, you’ll definitely have to speed up – unfortunately, with every additional step you manage to make your way down, the escalator moves up even faster.

By the time you manage to get down 20 steps, the escalator is moving upward so fast that it is all you can do to just try and not be carried back up.

Depressing?

If we could only find a way to slow down the escalator. Or even better, if you could only get to the bottom and get off!

Alas – that is not how our bodies work.

Yes, for some people the escalator moves more slowly than for others – this is why they find it easier to run down and it takes them less effort to maintain their position half-way down. Others have to fight harder to get there and for others, the escalator simply gets too fast, eventually carrying them all the way back up – no matter how hard they try.

Bariatric surgery and obesity medication can help slow down the escalator or rather, prevent it from speeding up quite as fast as you try to run down. This is why you can maintain a lower spot on the escalator with the same effort as before – but go off your meds or reverse the surgery and the escalator speeds up again only to carry you back all the way to the top.

Why is the escalator analogy important to understand?

At this point I want to add a couple of important points to this analogy.

Firstly, it is important to remember that whatever took you to the top of the escalator, if not addressed, will make the descent even harder (if not impossible).

In the simplest case – to use an analogy that a reader sent in – imagine trying to run down the escalator on one leg – it’s going to be so much harder than with two legs. So if arthritis in one knee took you to the top of the elevator in the first place, trying to get back down while your knee is still killing you is going to be so much more difficult than if your knees were OK.

Similarly, if depression or binge eating took you up the escalator, trying to get down that escalator while still depressed or still not in control of your eating is going to to be so much harder than if these problems were resolved.

It may help to think of whatever took you to the top of that escalator as additional baggage that you have to lug along as you try to run down – the heavier the bags, the harder it is going to be.

As readers will realize, those excess bags could be anything – from a genetic predisposition, to medications that you might be on, to lack of sleep, to high stress levels, to intimate saboteurs, to relationship issues, to loneliness, to body image issues, to childhood trauma – the list goes on and on….

This is why it makes a lot of sense to first deal with what took you to the top before beginning your journey down that up-escalator.

Clearly, simply jumping on that escalator without first dealing with the underlying problem will make losing weight and keeping it off so much more difficult - remember, running down the escalator with no baggage is already hard enough

But, even if the underlying problem is dealt with – you will still be trying to run down the up-escalator – that unfortunately will never change – it will only get somewhat easier the less baggage you have to carry.

But why does the escalator move up in the first place and why does the escalator analogy have important implications for how we address obesity treatments?

Why use the escalator analogy at all? Why is the escalator moving up? Why does it get faster as you get further down? And why is there no bottom, where you can simply get off?

Let’s start with the upward moving escalator – most of us are on it to start with as most of us tend to gain weight with age – unfortunately, some people faster than others. Very few of us manage to keep our teenage weights into late adulthood. There are many reasons for this – for one, our metabolism “slows down” as we get older, so do our levels of physical activity. Then there are other drivers of weight gain that tend to accumulate as we get older – stress, lack of sleep, arthritis, medications, to name a few. This means that for most of us, to not be carried higher on that escalator, we already have to take the occasional step down – the faster our personal escalator is moving up, the more effort we will have to put into simply “marking time”.

But that’s the easy part (preventing initial weight gain is always easier than treating obesity). To lose weight, you have to actually start moving down the escalator faster than it is moving up. Depending on how fast your personal escalator is moving up, the more effort this will take. The tricky part comes when the escalator starts speeding up as you make your way down – this is what is often referred to as the “starvation response” – a complex series of metabolic and behavioral responses aimed at preventing further weight loss and promoting weight regain.

In previous posts I have discussed some of these factors – leptin, ghrelin, sympathetic nerve activity, body temperature – the net result is that as you get lower down on the escalator, the fewer calories you need and the greater your hunger and appetite gets. This is why, keeping weight off gets harder and harder rather than easier and easier the more weight you lose. (Many people think that if I can only lose the first 20 lbs, losing the next 20 will be easier – that is almost never true).

Finally, why is there no bottom where I can simply get off? This is because based on the “setpoint theory” (which is actually far more than just a “theory”), your body always wants to get back to its highest weight (or back to the top of the escalator). Unfortunately, from everything we know about weight management, there is no “cure” for obesity – meaning you will always have to continue doing whatever it is you did to lose the weight to keep it off.

As I noted in my previous post, anti-obesity medications or surgery may make keeping weight off somewhat easier, but they do not “cure” obesity – stop your medications or reverse your surgery and your weight comes right back. This appears to be a rule in weight management – when you stop the treatment, the weight comes back (the same goes for “diet and exercise” as a treatment).

Although depressing, I do hope the escalator analogy is helpful in understanding how weight management works, why keeping weight off is so difficult, why very few people can ever hope to reach and maintain their “dream weight”.

Anyone, who promises you anything else is simply not being honest.

No doubt we need more effective treatments for obesity and perhaps one day we may even find a “cure” – till then, we’ve got to work with what we have.

                                  Dr. Sharma’s Obesity Notes – www. drsharma.ca

 I’ve experienced a lifetime of dieting in order to avoid, and to end, my obesity. I always thought that: if, and when, I got to normal weight, and managed to stay there for 5 years, by then my body would adjust to being normal size, so that eating only what my body needed to maintain my weight-loss, would become more “natural”, and therefore be less difficult.

This has not been the case.

Here in my 8th year, (now working on my12th) I am still running Down the Up escalator, and the past several years, that escalator HAS been speeding up. Maintaining my body at a normal weight is harder now in my 8th year (now 12th year) than it was the first two years after arriving at my goal weight. … and it was NOT easy then.

Nevertheless, I am committed to continue.

NOTE:  DietHobby originally posted this article on 7/7/2013, and I'm bumping it up for new members.

Treating Dieting as a Hobby (see: ABOUT ME) involves the ongoing task of finding or creating ways to keep myself interested in detailed issues involving Weight-Loss and Maintenance, as well as watching how MY own body responds to those various issues.

Here at DietHobby I sometimes share my personal weight and calorie numbers, along with Tactics that I’ve used to help me in Maintenance. These past articles showing my weight and calorie history can be easily located under BLOG CATEGORIES, Status Updates.

Yesterday I posted about my Summer Experiment 2017.

Collecting, recording, and analyzing detailed personal data has helped me lose weight and maintain that weight-loss.

For the past 13 years I’ve been logging all of my daily food intake into a computer food journal which provides me with a calorie count.  I’ve also been using a scale to see my early morning weight, unclothed, immediately after urination, which I record immediately.

As part of my long-term-weight-loss-Maintenance journey I use various charts to track my progress. Although each chart uses the exact same weight and calorie information, I’ve found that charting that information in different ways helps give me new viewpoints which sometimes results in additional insight.

Bounce Chart

My body’s daily weight tends to Bounce up and down quite a lot.  In my weight-loss phase I created a table that I call a “Bounce Chart”, and during a specific time period, I make daily entries to a specific chart in order to track the range of my daily weight deviations. 

The 98 Days of Summer “Bounce” chart shown here covers the 98 day time period between Memorial Day and Labor Day 2017. It shows my starting weight was 133.2 and my ending weight was 132.0.  So, this shows that I had a net weight loss of 1.2 pounds for the entire summer which involved a 9 pound “Bounce Range”. 

During that 98 day period, I ate an average of 662 calories per day. 1st third of the summer, my calories averaged 624 per day; 2nd third of summer, my calories averaged 654 per day; 3rd third of summer, my calories averaged 705 per day.

Weekly Results Chart

This “Weekly Results” chart shows my Monday morning weight along with my daily calorie average for the prior week.

It covers the 19 week period from April 17, 2017 through September 4, 2017, showing the ongoing connections between my weekly weight and my daily average calorie intake.

This chart shows that during this time period, my net weight loss was 1.2 pounds, with a 19 week calorie average of 684.


Online chart from TrendWeight

The Chart below is from the website: “TrendWeight, Automated Weight Tracking in the Style of the Hacker’s Diet .“

It provides a graph showing my weight Trend Line  from April 17, 2017 through September 4, 2017 together with my actual daily weights.

This shows that on this current date, my actual weight is trending at 133.1 pounds.

Like most online calculators, the TrendWeight chart relies only on weight input, and makes assumptions about the calories of one’s food intake based on the commonly used metabolic formulas such as Harris Benedict or Mifflin. 

I input 120 pounds as my goal weight, and took it’s lowest weight-loss option, which was to lose ½ pound per week.  Based on that data the program told me that my body is eating 174 more calories than it is burning, and that to lose ½ pound a week, I need to eat 424 calories less per day.

My daily calorie average for the entire Trend Weight time period was actually 684 calories, and based on my ongoing weights, according to TrendWeight’s metabolic data, my body’s current total metabolic burn is 510 calories.  

 Furthermore, TrendWeight tells me that in order to lose ½ pound per week, I will need to subtract 424 calories per day from the amount that I am now eating.  Subtracting 424 calories from my average calorie intake of 684 results in a recommendation to eat a daily average of only 260 calories daily in order to achieve a ½ pound weekly weight loss.  

The Realities of Life

In previous articles I’ve spent a great deal of time discussing the issues surrounding the mathematical Metabolic formulas, including the fact that they are all based on AVERAGES; that a 15% deviation up or down is normal while there are some people (outliers) whose numbers are FAR different than the group number. 

At present, most experts consider Mifflin to be the most accurate of these formulas.  To keep things in perspective, Mifflin gives the average 72 year old, 5'0" tall, female weighing 130 pounds a BMR of 1016 calories. When sedentary activity is included to that number, the average daily caloric maintenance requirement is 1219.

One of the leading obesity researchers, Dr. Rudolph Leibel of Columbia University, says that a “reduced obese” person’s metabolic burn will normally be about 15% less than the metabolic burn of a person (of the same height, weight, age, and activity level) who has always been a “normal” weight.  Also, I recently saw a medical obesity specialist that I respect say that he’s occasionally seen deviations 25% lower than the average Mifflin BMR. 

So, if we assumed the average "normal" weight person of my size and age would have a BMR burn of 1000 calories, a 25% reduction would be 750 calories.  As there are different levels of sedentary activity, a sedentary metabolic burn of 1100 calories would not be unreasonable, and a 25% reduction would be 825 calories. 

Calorie counting is never an exact science, and at these low numbers, an unwitting daily 10 to 20 percent error could account for a 100 to 150 calorie deviation.  This could bring an outlier’s maintenance calorie burn to around 675, which is where … evidentially… my calorie burn has been trending.

Here’s an online chart graphing
my Average Weekly Weights over the past 8 ½ years.

This chart reflects that since 2013, I’ve had several successful weight drops down into the low 120s, but even though during the past 4 years my daily calorie intake averages totalled less than 1000, my body has been unable to maintain those weight-losses long-term.

The right half of this chart involves weights from the high 130s to the low 120s … a bounce range of around 15 pounds or so. 

I think it is relevant to point out that I diligently and consistently worked at dieting for weight-loss and maintenance during ALL of this time period, and the ongoing Ups and Downs shown in the right half of the chart can NOT be attributed to periods of inattention or ongoing periods of "overeating".  The drastic weight drops involved a drop in glycogen, salt, water, & waste due to several weeks of radical very-low-calorie diets  of around 200 to 300 calories.  Many of the weight increases reflected the return of that glycogen, salt, water & waste when my calories increased to an average of between 700 and 1000 calories. 

For an understanding of the kinds and amounts of food I normally eat, look at the photos of meals I’ve recorded in RESOURCES, Photo Gallery section, under the heading Petite Meals.



In Summary

So, what can a reduced-obese person who has metabolic numbers like I have, do?

I feel certain that additional exercise is not part of a solution for me. Almost 12 years ago, when I got to my original goal weight of 115 pounds, I was 60 years old and physically able to be more active than I am now. Furthermore, I have spent my 72 year lifetime as a sedentary person whose favorite outdoor activity is to go back inside.  When considering my age, my current mindset and physical limitations, there is very little I can do to change my current activity level. The small amount of additional exercise I might be able to tolerate would increase my hunger but do very little to increase my calorie burn.

I can continue working to track my calories and weight as carefully and exactly as possible.

I can continue working to keep the calories of my food intake as low as I can reasonably, healthily, and happily tolerate.

I can continue working toward keeping my weight as low as my body will healthfully allow.

I can work to ACCEPT the fact that things are just as they should be even though my body weight now has a BMI near the border between “normal” and “overweight”. Since my body appears to be unwilling to return to my original weight-loss goal … despite numerous, exhaustive attempts to force it do so, …. its continued refusal to cooperate with my weight-loss attempts might be an indicator that my body is already at its optimal weight for this late stage of my life.  

As part of my long-term Maintenance of a large weight-loss (currently 12+ years ), I do a lot of personal experimenting with various dieting issues. 

My experiment this summer from Memorial Day to Labor Day was to see how my own body’s weight results compared with the Body Weight Planner’s (BWP) projected calculations;

... while making a consistent and hard-core effort to drop my current weight lower in my Maintenance Weight Range (back below the 25 BMI border between “normal” and “overweight”).

The Overview pictured above shows my personal data input and the program’s projections for weight-loss. I’m age 72, going on 73, so I listed my age as 73.  I used the lowest percentage that the program will allow for my Physical Activity Level.

Based on my personal numbers, the program gave me an 1151 maintenance calorie burn. It projected that if I ate 900 calories per day for the 98 days between Memorial Day and Labor Day, I would lose from 133.2 pounds down to 126.0 pounds.  This would be a loss of 7.2 pounds over a 14 week period, averaging about ½ pound loss per week.

Note that the  program projects that at the end of the 98 days, in order to maintain a 126.0 pound weight, my calorie burn would be 1121, which is an ongoing 30 calorie reduction. 

This Simulation Graph shows that Increasing my calories from 900 for weight-loss to 1121 for maintenance would cause a weight UpBounce of 1.5 pounds over a 6 day period (98 days of dieting, + 6 days of maintenance = 104 days). 

Therefore my projected final ongoing weight result would be 127.5, which would bring me back just inside my “normal” BMI range.


Many years of keeping ongoing records of my weights and calorie counts have taught me that my personal metabolism burn is Lower than the Average rate predicted by Metabolic Formulas, so my personal diet plan for this experiment was to work to keep my daily calorie intake below 700 calories.

I chose to work toward a <700 calorie number because:

An 1150 calorie burn minus a food intake of 900 calories creates a 250 calorie deficit.

If my actual calorie burn was 900 instead of 1150, then a 250 calorie deficit would be 650 calories.
Also in my previous dieting experience, food intake of around 700 calories has been about the lowest calorie level that I’ve been able to sustain on diets lasting longer than 2 or 3 consecutive weeks.

I’ve had extensive experience with a great many different diets and ways-of-eating, and this has taught me that I tend to do best on a food plan that restricts the total daily AMOUNT of food that I eat (has a maximum daily calorie number), but does not restrict the KINDS of food eaten, nor restrict the FREQUENCY of eating.  Therefore, my food plan for this experiment allowed me to eat small amounts of whatever food I desired, whenever I choose to do so, as long as I stayed under my daily calorie maximum. 

My 5-bite dieting friends will understand when I say that 700 calories per day is the caloric equivalent of about 2 ½ Snickers or Protein bars. 

For an understanding of the kinds and amounts of food I normally ate during this experiment, look at the photos of meals I’ve recorded in RESOURCES, Photo Gallery section, under the heading Petite Meals.

I expect to soon post a discussion of the RESULTS of my Summer 2017 experiment in a separate article, entitled “Status Update - September 2017”. 

For more information on the Body Weight Planner (BWP)  see Body Weight Calculator - Timeline Projections.

It is very difficult
to manipulate one’s body size.

Most obese people find this to be
a laborious task in the short-term.
(short-term = a few years)

As a long-term task,
it is so eternally grueling
that it is almost impossible
for most reduced-obese people.
(long-term = many years). 

Weight-loss is HARD.
Maintaining weight-loss is HARD. 
Being fat is HARD. 

Everyone, … very thin, normal-weight, over-weight, fat, or super-fat, … has the Right to Choose which HARD they can best manage to live with.

I’ve found this past 12+ years of maintaining a very large weight-loss to be a consistently grueling task that has become more difficult each and every year so far.  Keeping my reduced-obese body at or near a “normal” size still requires continual ongoing vigilance and sometimes almost super-human willpower.  Maintaining weight-loss is the HARD that I am currently choosing, but that doesn’t make me superior to other people who choose to live their lives differently.

Here’s an excellent article written from the perspective of someone who has made the choice to Stop Dieting and to Accept and Live With their Body’s Fat.

“It’s Not a Diet,
It’s a Lifestyle Change” is Bullshit.
               
by Ragen Chastain, danceswithfat

You’ve heard it. I’ve heard it. We’ve all heard it. Back in my dieting days - before I did my research  - I believed it.

The secret to lasting weight loss, they say, is that you can’t go on a diet, you have to make a lifestyle change.

This is total, complete, utter bullshit. It’s a lifestyle change alright – you change to a lifestyle where you’re dieting all the time, and it still doesn’t work. 

One of the big issues that the weight loss industry has created is a world where any weight loss claim said with authority that sounds even remotely plausible is accepted and repeated as proven fact.  Even in the world of peer-reviewed research, incredible liberties are given to weight loss research when it comes to not having to support their assumptions with evidence.

I was on a panel at a very prestigious school for their Eating Disorder Awareness Week.

At one point the school’s dietitian who was on the panel said that the reason people don’t maintain weight loss is that they lose the weight too fast, that you you should lose 1/2 pound a week and then you would keep the weight off.

I wasn’t surprised to hear it, there have been versions of this going around since I was a kid.

I knew that the students at the school were super smart and data driven so I said “I must have missed those studies, who conducted the research?”  She stammered for a moment, then said “Oh, there isn’t any research.”

Had I not been there those students would have heard only from a professional dietitian employed by their school, authoritatively telling them that they could achieve lasting weight loss by losing 1/2 pound a week -- as if she was stating a fact, despite having not a shred of evidence to back up her claim.

I think that one of the hardest things we have to come to grips with (as we get off the diet roller coaster and start a non-diet path), is the sheer number of times we’ve been lied to, and the extraordinary breadth and depth of people who have done the lying.  

Some Lie because they Believe the lies, some because they Want to Believe the lies (despite that fact that they’ve been weight cycling for years), and many, many of them for Profit.

I hear about far too many people who, on their death bed, regret having spent their entire life dieting.

In order to break free of the diet and weight loss paradigm that holds us down we have to see it for what it is – a lie, created on lies, supported by lies, and perpetuated by those who lie for profit. 

It’s a Galileo issue. = The idea that

"anyone who tries hard enough
to lose weight can do it"

is widely believed, supported fervently
with religious zeal, and
not at all supported by the evidence.



My life got better immensely and immediately
when I stopped buying the lies that I could manipulate my body size,
and that doing so was a worthy pursuit in the first place.
When it comes to diet culture, that’s the only lifestyle change that I’m interested in.