Maintenance works - if YOU work it!!!!!!!!!!

[ConnieK..]

I felt some things needed to be put in writing here for those wondering if maintenance is beyond the realm of mere mortals.

There has been so much conjecture about how hard maintenance is and how much trouble people have maintaining. So I felt it important to post here from the ones who don't find it unmanageable. I know there are a few of us, we stayed after reaching goal in order to help out. We don't stay for support from the forum but rather to maybe help someone with what we have learned.

I personally went into this program knowing it was my last resort before lap band surgery ( which I considered the absolute end). I had done exactly as every doctor, dietician, weight loss expert had told me for a very long time and not got to goal. When I got to goal on this program the happiness I felt cannot even be expressed in words!

I also knew that the diet is only 20% of the solution, getting the head space right is 80% ... I have said it a thousand times and I will say it again ... get the head right or you will fail - end of story. You will be on a merry go round of guilt and remorse, binge and purge that will see you circling the drain on a spiral into eating disorders or gaining back what you lost.

I have copped a lot of flack here for my hard line stance on deviations and my tough love views on getting your head right, but I ask you to look at the evidence. I stuck to the program 100% ... I stick to the maintenance guidelines .... Not complicated really. There is NOTHING special about me, I just knew I wanted this more than anything else in my life, I knew I had to change my LIFESTYLE ... not just go on a diet for six months, change what I ate for ever! And I knew I needed to get my head right in order to maintain the loss.

I do not binge, I do not purge, I don't do guilt and remorse, I eat to my new lifestyle 80% of the time and indulge only within the guidelines ...and suprise suprise ...... I am 13 months after goal and I weigh less than last year! There is absolutely NOTHING I could be offered that would represent a better deal than finally having the body I want .... NOTHING!!

I don't need food to celebrate, I don't use food as a reward. I don't consider I am missing out on anything, I don't envy others who eat the foods I know I can't. I do what I have to do to stay where I want to be.

It is really that simple! Maintenance does work ... If you work it. If you go through the plan thinking you will be able to go back to eating everything that made you fat in the first place ... you will pretty soon be back on plan trying to get off what you will gain. I guarantee it.

The guidelines are really simple, but they work. It's only when you try and convince yourself you know better and that you are different and you can eat chocolate every day, or have carbs for breakfast every day or eat sweets between meals that you start to unwind.

Instead of thinking about food you can't have, think about the food for thought raised by so many here ... and get the headspace right!!!!!!

Connie