The Maintenance Chatbox… come and share your success with us!

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The Maintenance Chatbox… come and share your success with us!

This topic contains 11,633 replies, has 174 voices, and was last updated by  hermajtomomi 3 months, 3 weeks ago.

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  • Auriga, red wine is a weakness of mine also! I’ve now stopped drinking on school nights (because I can’t stop at one glass!), but am sat here now approaching one bottle… Which is pretty stupid, as I can’t tolerate the same amount as I used to. I guess as I’ve lost 15% of my weight I should drink 15% less. Just need to re-educate my brain!

    Today was my official weigh-in. I had been holding steady at 61.2kg every day for over a week but today, after one fast day only this week and that on Thursday, I’m 60.6. So I’m now thinking I should maybe just do 16:8 every day (and no ‘proper’ fast days) since 16:8 is quite natural for me, and I’ll still get the fasting benefits and there is still some daily calorie restriction. Think that will be easier for me than having a fast day (or two), but at the expense of daily 16:8.

    From reading the forum it’s clear that we’re all individual and different, but I’d be really interested to hear from other maintainers about their eating habits during weight gain, loss and maintenance. There must be some patterns/groups in all of this!

    Dear Franfit and Auriga Firstly thanks to Franfit for pointing me to this link, it’s extremely interesting. I’ve been doing 5:2 since 15th Feb and have gone from 150 lbs (10st10) to 129 lbs (9.3) in 16 weeks, I’m 5ft 4ins tall. I’ve been a bit of a yo yo dieter all my adult life really ranging from 9.7 – 10.7 but usually staying around the 10st mark. I really feel with the 5:2 though that I’ve cracked it and that I will reach goal and stay there. I haven’t been this slim in 20 years, I feel great actually and, dare I admit to feeling a little smug! I agree with you Auriga, being overweight is now the norm and I do feel really good about achieving this weight loss. Isn’t it funny how we are so happy to quickly get rid of the too big clothes but hang onto the too small ones for donkeys years!

    I divide my time between Greece and London, having homes in both countries – I’m retired but have a disable daughter to care for so life is not always easy but spending the summer in Greece we have a wonderful lifestyle and there’s a lot of swimming and beach so added incentive to be slim. I’m looking forward to hearing more from everybody on maintaince and although I’m not quite there – another five weeks to go I imagine – I hope to pick up lots of tips and inspiration from you guys. I’ve recently been using MyFitnessPal to help keep track of my calories, it’s a free app and I’ve found it really helps I haven’t yet found any food that can’t be tracked and automatically added up. With only a few more pounds to lose, I’ve found I need to stick to 1,200 for 5 days and if course 500 for 2! Anyway I’m looking forward to chatting with everybody here again soon. Enjoy France Auriga πŸ™‚

    Good morning buddies and welcome Elainefriend! Your starting weight and height matched mine Elaine and I hope that you’ll soon see a figure below nine stone. How lovely to be able to spend the summer in Greece. I love Greek food having spent ten years living in Cyprus and feasting on Greek delights, not all of them healthy mind you! Delicious none the less. Take care buddies and enjoy your day.

    Good evening Dr Micheal’s success story tellers, I have fasted today and tomorrow I will be doing my second Nordic walking in the morning and bowling tin he afternoon hoping to be good has there is a meal provided I still want to be at goal on Tuesday.
    ( Sorry if I am repeating myself but I am not sure if anyone reads the other threads, LOACA and Jojo hope you will forgive if you read it all before.)
    Good night all.
    JIP

    Well JIP I am reading your posts and all those on here and elsewhere too! Good night all as well. It’s interesting what some threads ‘throw up’ so to speak. I hope this one is supportive and not off the wall! I live in hope that someone monitors what is said on here and that Dr M is still reading from time to time. Good night all. πŸ™‚

    Dear HappyNow, Like you wine was my weakness but I’ve found that with the restricted calories and the weight loss I just can’t tolerate it so much now and it makes me soooo hungry so I try to avoid it opting for the odd beer instead which I find less addictive and more sustaining. Saying that, Ive just returned from a big fat Greek bapism where the wine flowed like water and an awful lot of it my way!! It sounds like you are struggling to get under the dreaded 60 kgs mark? I’ve finally managed to break that barrier and actually I didn’t believe it would be possible for me to do so but I did it on the 5:2! I’ve said to my Greek friends that losing weight in kilograms is much harder psychologically as 10lbs and 1 stone is less to lose than 10 kilos! I’m so glad I’ve found this forum as losing the weight is only half the battle, keeping it off is going to be the real challange….

    Dear Auriga How interesting to hear that you lived in Cyprus for 10 years, my house in Greece is in a small seaside village on the Peloponnese a couple of hours drive outside Athens. Yes, Greek food has its pluses and minuses! Olive oil is fabulous and healthy but at 110 calories a tablespoon a Greek salad with feta and oil is not always as sinfree as first appears especially when eaten as an accompliment to a meal, when I first started living in Greece, I really gained weight extremely quickly even though I thought I was eating wisely! I now view a “salata horiatiki” Greek salad as a main course and when making it for myself I limit the olive oil to a tablespoon and the feta to an ounce! Saying all that, I’ve just returned today from a big fat Greek baptism so I do not expect to lose any weight this week! And I am entertaining guests tomorrow as its a holiday weekend here so I’m thinking this may be one of those weeks when my expected 1lb loss doesn’t happen. Anyway, I’m so glad over found this forum, everybody has a story to tell which is booth fascinating and ibsprati

    My Iphone went “funny” that last line should have read that I’m finding this forum both fascinating and inspirational:-)

    Hi Elainefriend. I agree about reduced tolerance for wine, and the wine munchies! I hadn’t thought about trying beer instead, but will give it a go as I was always partial to real ale in my youth.

    Re: 60kg. I wasn’t really trying to get below that weight. I didn’t have a goal as such, except to practice 5:2 for health benefits (including weight loss!) and see where it took me. Having got to 61ish I think maybe I should try and maintain at between 60 – 63. I’m not aiming to be skinny, just happy in my skin and healthy, and I am now happy with how I look and feel. But now you’ve worried me that I ought to weigh less!! How did you decide on your goal weight/size?

    And I must admit I’m using both metric and imperial! My scales tell me kgs, which I then convert to lbs and stone…..!

    Hi HappyNow, Oh dear, I didn’t mean to make you feel you should lose more! I totally agree with you that we should aim to feel good in our own skin and at whatever weight works for us. I started out aiming to get under 10 stone, when I’d achieved that, I decided to aim to get under 130lbs, then under 60kgs and now I feel if I can weigh less than 9st – I will be happy and will go onto maintaince. The least I’ve ever weighed was 8st 11lbs but I believe that’s a bit low but I think 8.13 is achievable and will give me a maintaince ceiling of 9st. Weight is such an individual thing, and we are all built differently so even women of the same weight and hight won’t be the same build. It’s wonderful to find what suits you and feel confident with that and I really didn’t mean to imply that you should be under 60kgs. Well done on what you’ve achieved, we are all doing this for ourselves and our goals arn’t, nor should they be, the same πŸ™‚

    Morning buddies! I too weigh myself in kilos it just felt less threatening for some reason! I weigh between 56 and 57 kilos, 56.3 k today. I think that’s 8stone 12ish or 126lbs. I will be happy to stay in that region now, must keep under the 9stone mark for safety! I did see 55.5k once but I think my body didn’t like it πŸ™‚ I always wanted a bit more’wiggle room’ but it’s not happening. Maybe because some of us are older we need to hang on to a bit of fat!

    Good morning, maintenance buddies! Sorry for not posting yesterday, I just felt really tired after working in the morning, so I spent the afternoon reading part of “The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living” by Jeff Volek and Stephen Phinney, which is an extremely interesting, if somewhat technical, book, until time to cook my fasting-day dinner of some beautiful dark red wild sockeye salmon, asparagus, green salad, and fresh local strawberries.

    Found out one reason why I might have been feeling tired lately this morning, when I got on the scale and it registered 114, I had never seen that number before, had seen 115 only once before, on Saturday, so, after weight loss slowing as I neared my goal, I must have suddenly dropped between one and two pounds of fat. I guess I should back off of fasting a bit more! I decided no more fasting days this week unless I go over 117, the mid-point of my maintenance range, for sure. It’s going to feel extremely strange, fasting only one day a week. Maybe I’ll do at least one 16:8 with no calorie restriction, just so the change doesn’t feel too radical.

    I agree that each person’s goal weight is a very individual thing, and also difficult to decide on if you’ve been heavier than you like for a long time. I thought I wanted to get back to my baseline young adult weight, but that turned out to be too little for me at my current age and fitness level, I decided to maintain about 12 pounds above that, from 115-119. We all have different skeletons, different degrees of musculature, carry our weight in different parts of our bodies, etc. And there is some evidence that being very lean but not fit is not especially healthy at any age, but especially not as we get older. So replacing fat with muscle is good, but just getting really skinny, maybe not.

    I also think measuring in pounds gives more encouragement when losing weight — although, if you’ve used kilos all your life, I think suddenly more than doubling the number that your weight is would feel super-discouraging! I just pull out my calculator when people post numbers I’m not used to, lol. For some reason I have trouble converting stones to pounds in my head.

    I really did not think I would fast fewer than 2 days a week this early into maintenance, need reassurance, please! Auriga, I think all of us here now want to keep this a supportive thread, believe we can do so πŸ™‚

    One day’s fast a week is good maintenance for some folks franfit….give it a go and see how you do! I have buddies on another website (fastdayforum) and it works for some of them but not all. Some folks find 16:8 works and some like me have to do more!
    I don’t really mind because I know this way of eating has other benefits. Take care folks got to dash off!

    Auriga/Franfit I love reading your posts but pray tell me, what’s 16:8@50%? I’m struggling this weekend, what with attending a big fat Greek baptism yesterday and entertaining friends to a full roast English dinner today (including Yorkshire pudding) I really have fallen off the wagon! Think I may have to do a back to back two day fast starting tomorrow if I’m to gain ground – says she swigging on yet another glass of vino…

    Hello Elainefriend πŸ™‚ 16:8 refers to the amount of hours in a day you refrain from any food, in this case 16 and then an eating window of 8 hours. It’s referred to in Dr Michael Mosley’s Fast Diet book; namely an experiment on mice where two groups of mice were fed identical amounts of food but one set of mice were restricted to an eating window of 8 hours, whilst the other group were allowed to eat when they liked. The group which ate in the 8 hour window put on less weight and also had less fatty liver damage and better blood results. Some people do 18:6 or 20:4 or 24 hrs too!
    Not sure quite what franfit means by @50% I shall let her answer that. I too am doing a back to back after overindulging yesterday.

    I forgot to say you should pop over to this forum,(see below) lots more information and also you can fill in a tracker to track your weight loss or maintenance……great people too! I started out on here but found the other website a bit more supportive last year. I came back on here to say thank you to Dr.M and then now I find I can’t leave!! People need help and I don’t mind giving it.
    forum.fastday.com

    Auriga, thanks for the support and for the link πŸ™‚ Don’t think I could keep up with another forum at the moment, however! I tried this forum a few months ago, too, and then didn’t bother for a while because I didn’t really connect with anyone and there were a couple of people who were critical of my need to drink coffee in the morning in order to be alert enough to drive, one person even seemed to think I should make sure that I actually fall asleep at the wheel before resorting to caffeine! Like I’m going to put schoolchildren and pensioners on foot in my neighborhood at risk while I make sure I actually fall asleep at the wheel! And nobody really stuck up for me about it, when I was a complete newbie. So things can change over time, lol. One thing it took me a long time to figure out about this forum is that a lot of people (maybe most) pretty much seem to read just one or two threads. Since I’ve had success, I like to check ‘recent posts’ when I can in case there are newbies with questions.

    Elainefriend, sorry, a 16:8 @ 50% is my own personal shorthand, doing a 16:8 day at 50% of TDEE was a compromise I came up with when I wanted to do 4:3 but couldn’t quite manage it. I’m not sure how much scientific backing 16:8 really has, but it would seem like it could help to keep insulin levels under control, and can help people keep a lid on how much they’re eating throughout the day.

    Dear FranFit/Augira, Thanks for clarifying 16/8, I feel rather embarresed that I didnt figure it out for myself, especially as I have read Michael’s book. Also the friend who introduced me to the Fast Diet, pointed out that I’ve been unwittingly fasting for years as I never eat breakfast and therefore regularly go 16 hours without eating. However, I have been severely criticised for this by a lot of people, even so I point out that I’m never hungry in the morning and that eating breakfast just adds to my calorie intake as it doesn’t prevent me eating more later and anyway the average breakfast is cereal based hence carbs and sugar and thus not particularly healthy and I suspect that the myth of “breakfast being the most important meal of the day” is endorsed by multi conglomerates to promote their products. Like you FranFit, I need my morning coffee. Anyway, thank you for enlightening me on all the different ways of approaching fasting.

    Elainefriend, please! Don’t feel embarrassed, the only dumb questions are the ones that don’t get asked!

    It isn’t clear in research if it’s breakfast itself that matters, or if eating breakfast is a proxy for eating in a planned, organized fashion (that promotes eating a healthier diet). The assumption seems to be that people who ‘skip’ breakfast are hungry later in the morning and end up eating high fat/high carb snack foods on the run instead of eating something with more nutritional value at home first thing in the morning. Someone who ‘skips’ breakfast would seem to be someone who would normally eat it, but did not for some reason usually having to do with disorganization or attempting to cut calories in a haphazard fashion. A lot of people are just not hungry first thing in the morning, and I cannot see any rational reason to force yourself to eat when you’re not hungry. Your ‘breakfast’ just happens a little later in the day, that’s all.

    It’s funny, after fasting for many months I now find that I can go without morning coffee if I fast until later in the day. (There was no way I could manage without breakfast in the beginning, the meal I can manage without is generally lunch, which I will sometimes even forget to eat.) The fasting seems to get my epinephrine/norepinephrine going, and I do OK. When I was heavier I could not drink black coffee without getting a terrific stomachache. I had to put quite a bit of half-and-half in it, for a pretty whopping number of calories for a fast day. So I switched to a smaller amount of coffee with a caffeine tablet for a while. This seemed to get a couple of people quite indignant. Well, I wasn’t about to cause an auto accident to please a couple of random people on the internet. It was just stupid.

    Anyway, it’s easy to have misunderstandings when all communication is in writing, and a lot of it done when we’re on the run or tired. Most people are mature enough to realize that they might have understood the tone of something in a way that it wasn’t intended and ask for clarification, but sometimes we just get hit at a vulnerable, tired moment and our feelings get hurt. So, I hope I never inadvertently hurt someone’s feelings, but it mistakes can happen. Sometimes just an omitted punctuation mark can seem to change the whole tone of something. So I’m always prepared to apologize if I hurt someone’s feelings by mistake!

    Dear FranFit interesting what you say about the skipping breakfast disorganisation theory, put like that it makes sense. Also true about being easily misunderstood when communicating via mail, especially when tired and we are all working on different time-lines. I was writing at 1am yesterday whilst for my UK buddies it was 11pm, not sure what the difference is for you. I would never criticise anybody’s regime – we are all different and one size doesn’t fit all, what works for one won’t necessarily work for another but this forum does throw up advice and tips that may enlighten and help us achieve our goals:-)

    I am just popping in to say I am sorry you had a bad experience with the other forum franfit.
    I think we’re all wonderful in our own way! I totally agree with what’s been said and your viewpoints.
    I think we’re making a good support team here.
    Take care everyone πŸ™‚

    Hi Elainefriend. I’m afraid it’s too late to take it back!! I will now have to see what under 60 looks like! I’m guessing it won’t be that much different to 61…?!

    I too was an unwitting 16:8er in my 30s. I’m guessing it was no coincidence that I was maintaining a healthy weight then. Unfortunately I then got brainwashed and bullied into believing that eating ‘breakfast’ early in the morning was the right thing to do, even though I’m not naturally hungry til mid morning (my Dad even told me I should get up earlier so I would be hungry at breakfast time!)

    I think there probably is truth in the saying that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but who decided that break fast was first thing in the morning? Kellogg maybe!? I now choose to break my fast when I’m hungry, not when I’m told I should eat, and no one can tell me that’s wrong. Oh OK, they can, but I’m not listening. La la la la can’t hear you….

    Ha ha, no you are quite right – 60 doesn’t look any different to 61 apart from in our heads LOL. Hmmm, the breakfast thing – people can get almost evangelical about it. In the past I’ve tried eating breakfast because even I have been convinced that I should from time to time, but without fail, and every time, I’ve put on weight! So, I’ve now just decided its not for me. This is my sixtieth year and I believe I’m now old enough to know what works best for me. Saying that, I’m quite partial to a full English from time to time in a nice little B&B! Good luck with the under 60kg goal, I only embarked on that journey through living in Greece – most women here seen to desire to weigh less than 60kgs and although I like to think of myself as an individual, when in Rome…

    Good morning buddies! We’ll it looks like all you 5 foot 4 friends of mine will be joining me in the under 60k club! I never thought that I’d ever get below that at Christmas, but I did and so can you.
    I have stopped now at 56-57k zone as you know, it’s a good place to be for me so I hope it is for you at our height. Mind you I have skinny little bones!
    I always used to be forced to eat breakfast too… Mainly a sugar laden cereal followed by toast & marmalade. I don’t miss it!
    Have a good day buddies…. It’s lovely and sunny here in the Uk (Norfolk) for a change. πŸ™‚

    Dear Augira, it’s just dawned on me, that now I’m over 60 – I’m aiming to get under 60! TBH, I never knew what a kilogram was before I embarked on my Greek adventure! I’ve made myself a nice little chart that goes from 11stone to 8.13 with stones, pounds and kilograms – so I was 10.10, 150, 68 and am now 9.3, 129, 58. My goal is 8.13, 125, 56 – where you are now! It’s been an interesting journey watching the weight come off in all the different measurements, it’s difficult to have a conversation outside of the UK talking in stones – explaining its left over from imperial measurements reinforces the foreign view of us as slightly eccentric! But actually us women of a certain age didn’t even learn metric in school, hence my need to construct a nerdy little conversion chart. So today is a fast day for me so onwards and upwards as into the breach we go…

    Elaine hope your day of fasting is going OK? I only started weighing myself in kilos because it didn’t mean anything to me….so I wouldn’t get upset by the numbers! A head in the sand attitude I had last year,now cured. πŸ™‚
    I read that Mimi has a BMI of 19 now and weighs a good bit less than we do BUT as a friend pointed out she’s a lot younger and I think we may need a little bit of fat at our age for emergency purposes! 56k to 57k is a good weight at our age & height to be if you’re fine boned I think. I’d love to be 54k, but it might be pushing it too far.

    Hi maintaining buddies πŸ™‚

    Scale said 114.8 this AM, I am relieved it went up, but usually see a bigger bounce back up when I have a sudden drop, so still planning no more fasts until next week, which feels really, really weird. 114 puts my BMI at 19.6, and I have to say I am not happy with it, even though I originally thought I wanted to get back to my youthful 105 pounds, because some loose skin suddenly showed up on my arms and legs that wasn’t there at 116-117. Of course that might just be from losing more than 40 pounds in a not-too-long length of time. But I’m really happy with my BMI at 20.1 at this point in life, 12 pounds above my young adult weight. I can’t point to it specifically at the moment, but am pretty sure there’s scientific evidence that being super-lean as a postmenopausal woman is not associated with particularly good health outcomes, unless the leanness comes from being super-fit. As weird as it sounds, I think the decision of when to stop losing weight can be difficult, especially if we’ve been heavier for a long time (like me — I haven’t seen these kinds of numbers on the scales since the 1980s; my son has never seen me this slim before), I know I look good when I look in the mirror, but sometimes my belly still feels fat and like it’s sticking out.

    My last few pounds before goal came off more slowly. Not sure if that was because I was smaller, or just because my weight loss usually stalled a bit every 10 pounds or so. It coming off so slowly was what made me think I should ease back from fasting very slowly, or I’d start piling it right back on. Now it looks like it was just my usual stall and that I probably should back off to 6:1. Will just have to see. I think that menopausal/postmenopausal women who are able to lose a pound a week may not have as much carbohydrate intolerance as those whose weight loss is slower. This is just a personal theory of mine, but would explain why adding a lower-carb approach to intermittent fasting seems to help some people; if you’re very carb-intolerant, fasting two days a week might not lower insulin levels enough to let the fat out of the fat cells most of the time.

    Auriga, the breakfast you were forced to eat sounds especially dreadful! Just a ton of carbs! And the less-than-ideal experience I had with a forum was actually with this one, I just ignored it for a few months then tried it again later, there was a turnover of people and I finally found some I ‘clicked’ with.

    Yes, HappyNow, I agree, ‘breakfast’ is whenever we break our fast πŸ™‚

    Dear FranFit, I’ve also developed a bit of loose skin, arms, tummy, legs, it’s putting me off going much lower. I have read that some of the skin will fill back out – after about a year and building a bit of muscle to replace the lost fat will help – I’ve had to put that on hold for a bit having pulled my shoulder by being to vigorous with resistance bands! I guess having got used to fasting for weeks on end, it must take some adjusting to stopping it. Amazing how quickly we can get used to new routines until the point that they become common place! I can quite see how tempting it might be to lose just a bit more, then a bit more, especially if one has been struggling with a weight issue for years, it almost doesn’t feel quite real to find something that actually gets it off, it’s empowering and liberating. I think modern images of stick thin women can really distort our body images, to the point where we women develop body-dysmorphia. That’s where this forum helps we are real women, speaking to real woman, swapping our trials and tribulations and reassuring ourselves that all’s well and we are doing OK :-))

    The loose skin gradually disappearing is good news to me! The inside of my arms right at the joint have loose skin. With the strengthening exercises I am doing, the rest of my arm looks great.

    I will have to search for specific exercises to use.

    Hmmmm talking about loose skin I think my arm and leg skin now resembles the wrinkly grandma from ‘The Simpsons’ ! It’s not a good look so I really hope it’ll go!

    Auriga! I’m not 5ft4, I’m 5ft6. Oh, and I’m not fine-boned…. Can I still be your friend…?!

    Franfit, interesting point about body image and perception. Despite what the scales say, and how my clothes fit (or don’t, even the things that were way too tight are now too big!), my default self image is definitely chubby. Maybe that’s why I look at myself in mirrors and windows so much – trying to reconcile my mental image with the new me? Or maybe its just vanity!

    I too have developed some loose skin, primarily in the same place as you Amy C. And, gulp, I have also noticed just in the last week that I have lost fat from my chest. I’m the same cup size but not quite as perky anymore….! I’m still in my 40s so I’d like to think my skin could catch up?

    HappyNow of course you’re still my friend! Despite your extra two inches!!!!
    I think the chances of your skin tightening up is greater than mine but ‘hey ho’ that’s life!
    I am off to get my fasting blood and glucose tolerance done tomorrow…… should be interesting! I won’t know the results til next week though. My doctor lives in the Stone Age and I had to badger him to make him let me get them done…I hope it’s going to be worth it!

    Hi buddies πŸ™‚

    I’ve read that the loose skin can continue to tighten up over about a year, so I think there’s some hope for all of us πŸ˜‰ HappyNow, I hope your chest perks up, mine are now not only technically ‘pendulous’, but they droop in a very unattractive, skinny sort of way that makes me really not even want to look at them in the mirror sans foundation garments, especially along with the loose belly skin intersecting with the C-section scar! I lost fat off my actual chest, too, so my ribs show a bit, weird to still have big boobs and my ribs showing! Will I ever be comfortable taking my clothes off for someone again, should I ever even meet a man who would make me want to? Oh, well, I’m sure I’ll get used to it all in time. At least I look good with my clothes *on* now!

    Elainefriend, sorry to hear about your sore shoulder. Day after tomorrow I have an appointment with a physical therapist to design a home exercise program for me to get stronger without injuring myself in the process — not only do I have a bunch of medical problems and no sense of balance, but I’m a total klutz, too!

    Auriga, good luck with your blood work. Have you had problems with glucose tolerance in the past? I think I want to get my hemoglobin A1C, triglycerides, and HDL cholesterol checked to make sure I don’t still have lurking visceral fat trying to give me metabolic syndrome.

    Well well HappyNow, Haven’t you been hiding your light under a bushel! 5ft 6ins, 61kgs and only 40 yrs old – you’re practically a supermodel compared to the rest of us. There is a lot of reflective confessing happening here so whilst we are at it, my bare legs now look like I’m wearing wrinkled stockings, and my once tight leggings now resemble baggy pajamas! I can’t lift my arms in the wind – people think I’m performing semaphore but its just the old bingo wings flapping about! But, lets also tell what we love about our new bodies! I have to say that I love feeling my hip and rib bones but what I admire most of the new me is having lost all the back fat – I’m still amazed at my side view as there is now no longer any spillover at the back nor front of my bar and although I don’t have much of a bum, without all the saggy hanging back fat, I now have more definition and my bum looks more curved! I don’t mind admitting I like what I see! Has anyone found that it can take longer deciding what to wear for a night out because everything fits and we are spoilt for choice – before it was a case of wearing anything that made us look a bit slimmer! I did a really good fast day yesterday and will do the same today got to join my maintaince buddies ASAP. Good luck with your blood tests Augira and thank you for starting this link – I feel some bonding happening here with all our honesty:-)

    Dear Franfit/Augira, Tell me, how does one decide when they have reached the right weight? My goals have kinda been based on numbers ie under 10, under 60, under 130 and now my final goal of under 9st but not sure if that’s right for me tho? I did read that people who reach their desired goal weight have a higher percentage rate of maintaining their new weight than dieters who give up before reaching goal. The theory being that settlng for less than we originally aimed for, psychologically suggests to our sub-conscious that we under-achieved and therefore failed in the first place! This is the reason I really want to reach my set goal, albeit an arbitrary one! But actually I do also feel that most conventional diets that involve the dieter paying good money to diet are designed to failed, if they didn’t, the diet industry would go out of business. The fast diet is different in that firstly it’s free and secondly it’s re-training us to bust the diet industry’s biggest myth of “you’ll never feel hungry” this is the biggest lie that’s sold with most industrial diets. I really don’t believe it’s possible to lose weight and not feel hungry and anyway what’s so bad about feeling hungry – surely its part of the human condition to occasionally experience hunger it’s perfectly natural and necessary. The endless non-stop grazing that goes on nowadays in order to permanently ward off hunger is unnatural and I believe dangerous because we all end up mmnot being able to read what our bodies are telling us. Forgive me, I went off on a rant there! So, anyway, I’m striving to reach a goal weight of 125lbs and once there I guess I will just know if that feels right for me – this is an exciting journey – it’s like metamorphosis:-)

    Elainefriend. 40, I wish! No its 46……

    While there are obviously downsides to communicating online, one good thing is that you are communicating with the inner person not the outer shell. We’re not defined by appearances here. We’re ageless.

    And from reading everyone’s posts, the issues don’t really change with age anyway! It seems to be a continuum of changes (and of degrees of change) and just as you come to terms with some of them (thinking of my eye wrinkles, which I detested through my 30s) and think you’re not looking too bad for your age….oh no, what’s this?! Are my jowls starting to sag? Where’s my chest going? When did that wrinkly belly appear? And whether it’s the first wrinkle or the hundredth, it’s still an unwelcome change to adjust to….

    Franfit. Re: being comfortable naked. If you meet the right someone, he should be looking past the outer you. If he wants pert and firm, he can try his luck with a 20 year old (in his dreams!). And, unless he’s in the first flush of youth (or Brad Pitt?!), he’s got his own body issues (and increasingly pendulous parts) to be insecure about.

    Auriga. I managed to get blood work done recently only by virtue of being a new patient following a Dr surgery change. There is high blood pressure and cholesterol in the family (and also bowel and breast cancer, which I hope fasting can also help me avoid). Also I realised after overindulging one night on pudding, after weeks of abstinence, that I felt really peculiar and ill all over and started to worry about my insulin/ blood sugar (and I’d read the stuff which suggests fasting may not be beneficial for women’s health). Anyway, results came back normal, so I appear to be bucking the national trend of being pre-diabetic. Good luck with your results.

    Well, work beckons. Good luck everyone maintaining today!

    Good morning my lovely buddies! I love to read what you’ve written before I decide what to do for the day with hubby…..we’re retired, yipppeeee!!

    Anyway just to say franfit I don’t have an issue with glucose intolerance but I’d like to think that I have super-tolerance now after fasting regularly!!! I do have a problem with high triglycerides though: my Stone Age doctor is always trying to get me to take statins……they’re no use for that I keep telling him. I have seen a cardiologist when I tried statins a few years ago who told me to come off them (they had a nasty effect on me) and never take them again….I think she knew what she was talking about. I don’t think my present doctor reads my notes. There are blood pressure issues and cholesterol problems in my family too HappyNow. I think I was well and truly on my way to metabolic syndrome before I started 4:3 so I have a lot to be grateful for. So long as my HDL’s are high and my LDL’s are low and my triglycerides have gone down I shall be a happy bunny next week.

    As for the perfect maintenance weight Elaine, I think you’ll know it when you see it so to speak….I know my body refuses to give up another ounce below 8 stone 12lbs!

    Off I go to the vampire department, have a great day everyone.

    p.s. I too am glad I started this thread and if your reading this and want to join in feel free. πŸ™‚

    Dear Auriga, I agree that retirement is wonderful, I can’t think how I found the time to go out to work! However, saying that, I did take early retirement in order to care for my daughter who developed a particularly severe form of MS in her thirties. It is hard at times, but, it doesn’t stop us having fun! I also have a hubby, who has started to make noises along the lines of “getting too skinny” however, he does on the other hand do a lot more playful bum slapping so im actually getting mixed messages from him! Anyway I’m doing this to pleased me and I feel happier than I have done for years.

    HappyNow, it’s true that each stage of life throws up different challanges. As for me, youth was completely wasted on me, I was so full of anxiety and self-doubt, it took me until I was about 45 to feel happy and confident in my own skin and stop apologising to everyone for self-perceived inadequacies! I’m enjoying life now, wrinkles an all and it’s wonderful to be able to keep learning, growing, changing, experiencing and making new friends – youth – it’s overrated if you ask me….

    Hello Maintainers! Thank you for starting this thread – it’s really interesting to see all the different methods being used to keep going with intermittent fasting. Keep letting us know your successes (and your blips!) I’m going to Italy on holiday this summer and I know the pull of the pasta will knock me off track for a bit… but what’s great is that I also know the route back.
    With all best wishes, Mimi

    Hello Mimi ! It’s a pleasure to be here and thank you so much for your inspiration. Enjoy your holiday.

    Welcome Mimi, Soon then we will
    Be posting from; you in Italy, Augira in France, me in Greece and FranFit the USA so that’s pasta, wine, moussaka and hamburgers tempting us….

    I have not been keeping up and now find I haven’t got time to read all the new material on this thread, so have just skimmed through it – anyway I just wanted to say I have read ‘Fat Chance’ by Dr Robert Lustig and OMG my eyes have been opened! I knew that sugar was really bad but now I understand more precisely why, and how it works on our metabolisms. Not surprisingly I have REALLY cut down on my sugar intake this week! I am hoping it is going to reduce my cravings and make maintenance easier if I can stick to it. I won’t be able to cut it out altogether, but I intend to restrict sugary foods to one or two days a week, and always after a healthy, high fibre meal.

    …oh, and I also now think we should all be shouting about this sugar issue much more loudly, so many people are still stuck in the low-fat model of dieting, unwittingly consuming more sugar in the process. It really is time the NHS guidelines changed their position on this.

    @elainefriend

    “surely its part of the human condition to occasionally experience hunger it’s perfectly natural and necessary. ”

    I believe that we need to be continuously stimulated. Eating food is one way. Another form of gratification, that I’m discovering, is clarity and focus. There are other forms that many are discovering.

    Being hungry is natural and we can use it as a trigger to expand our world.

    ➰

    Hi Elainefriend, this thread could be me. I was 14stone all but 1/2 a pound and I now love the clothes that I have and I cannot stop buying, I now need more wardrobes but I only have a small one bedroom bungalow so will have to give some older clothes away, well, I have had some of them 3 years since I got to goal with WW, I have not lost much off my bust but everything else is looking good and I do not look too top heavy. LOL. I am fasting today and I am going to stick to 5-2 to get a few more pounds off so that I can have a bit to play with when I go on holidays, I do not have anything booked but we have no ties so we can get off at a couple of days notice. God I love this way of life. Happy mentaining everyone. JIP

    Hi everyone, wasn’t it nice of Mimi to contribute to our thread. I hope she has a nice holiday because all of us on here will be able have a nice guilt free holiday indulging in the nice things of life, I am sure you may all know by now mine will a be Rum and diet coke and a few French sticks something I have been keeping away from while being a WW. I now know it can be eaten on my non fasting days occasionally.
    I am still going to my Weight Watchers meetings every Tuesday morning I have been at goal or within 5 pounds for 3 years.
    In the three years I have been at goal I have only paid 3 times and then only going over by 1 or 2 lbs or so.
    I still have good friends who are at goal or still on their road to their goal and I count it as a coffee morning.
    I am here to stay, 5-2 as changed my way of thinking and I have dieted all my life. JIP

    Hi again, I agree about the one of the nice thing about these threads we can use imagination to think what everyone looks like, that is one thing I have always had is a good imagination. Who needs Facebook? JIP

    Good morning, maintaining buddies! Mimi, thanks for stopping in — what a pleasure to ‘meet’ you πŸ™‚ I’m happy to report that I’m still at 114.8 pounds this morning, and the new loose skin seems to be tightening up a bit already. I’ve been trying to get my extra calories in maintenance from protein and fat rather than carbs. Then last night my son made a new recipe, polenta with sweet corn, omg it was *amazingly* good with butter, basil and parmesan cheese! Well, if I had to eat carbs, at least it was locally-ground whole-grain polenta and sweet corn fresh from Florida.

    Then he asked me if I was reading anything interesting, I told him yes, ‘The Art and Science of Low-Carbohydrate Living,’ and explained about high-carb diets leading to too-high insulin levels that keep fat locked up in fat cells instead of being able to be burned for energy, how that keeps people hungry and eating and drives a lot of the obesity epidemic. He thought it was really interesting. I explained about whole-food carbs being fine as part of a mixed meal for most people, but that this is why processed high-carb foods make people hungry a couple of hours later, that this is why he makes himself a bacon and egg burrito for breakfast and finds breakfast cereal more useful as a snack than as a meal — but that for me, being older, even for a snack I need cheese or nuts or something with more protein and fat in it. He totally got it. I was really pleased, since he does more than half of the cooking around here! Of course we’ll have the polenta with sweet corn again anyway, it was fantastic, and I can make sure I balance it with the parmesan cheese I put on top. And I doubt that he’ll quit making ice cream, lol, he does do that well. I’m glad that I don’t seem to be super carb-intolerant. I really should wait until I get some blood work done to be sure of that, though, I guess.

    StraR, yes, I think a lot of us have noticed that sugar, refined carbs, even whole-food carbs in excess or by themselves can cause us problems!

    JIP, congratulations on staying at your WW goal for another week πŸ™‚

    Auriga, did you know that the research now shows that total LDL cholesterol is not a reliable marker of risk for heart disease or anything bad — that too-low LDL levels might even be undesirable in women in our age group? Keeping triglycerides low and HDL up are worthy goals, according to current research, but with LDL it’s all about the fractions, which they never measure because it’s too difficult/expensive. Nevertheless official guidelines and most doctors continue to think that lowering total LDL is a good idea. It’s not. I plan on continuing to ignore mine, lol. Your doc does sound quite ignorant, thinking that statins would lower triglycerides. That’s pretty weird.

    Elainefriend, I know what you mean about worrying that you didn’t accomplish what you set out to do. I originally thought that I wanted to get back to 105 pounds. But, looking at me now, it’s difficult to believe that I ever could have looked good at that weight (although I did — when I was 17 and 27). It took me a few weeks of obsessing before I came to the conclusion that I did not need to get all the way down to that weight before deciding to re-gain 10 or 12 pounds because I just looked too skinny and didn’t feel good. When my weight suddenly dropped 117 – 115 – 114 in five days, I did *not* feel good, don’t think it made me look good, either. *If* I was more fit, a lower weight might look good — but it might not, at 57. It’s possible that, if I’m able to get more fit, I should let my weight rise by up to five pounds, since muscle is heavier than fat. So, it took a while, but I do not feel like I ‘gave up’ too soon because I was fed up with losing weight, I believe I made a decision based on more information to revise my original goal, and feel good about my accomplishment now. I am fascinated by weight-loss programs that set goals for people and wonder how they choose the weight targets they do. When you’ve been heavy for decades (as I have been), it’s just difficult to know what exact weight is appropriate at our current age. I think we have to feel our way to what works for each of us. The ‘normal’ BMI range is so wide — which I do think is a good thing, because we’re all different.

    Happy fasting to anyone who’s fasting today πŸ™‚

    I think it’s just great how we seem to be of a similar mind and very similar experiences of previous struggles with weight being brought together by serendipity and a way of eating that’s changed our lives! How marvellous! πŸ™‚

    Hi franfit and Maintenance pals, I only ever wanted to get to 10 stone 7 lbs when I got there I wanted to get BMI down so I needed to get to 10.01 and now I want another few pounds, I will settle for that, I am showing lots of wrinkles which are also called laughter lines, they come with age anyway. LOL. JIP

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