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Maintenance 101: How to Eat

Lisa Eirene

About Lisa Eirene Lisa lost 110 pounds through calorie counting and exercise. She swims, bikes, runs, hikes and is enjoying life in Portland, Oregon. Her weight loss story has been featured in First Magazine, Yahoo Health, Woman's Day and Glamour.com.

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10 Comments

  1. Lisa

    I’m still in weight loss mode (50 down, 40 to go) and I am TERRIFIED of maintenance mode! Thanks for such an informative post, I’ve saved it to Evernote so that when I get to my goal I can refer to it. Often 😀

    1. Lisa Eirene

      Congrats on the 50! Don’t be scared of maintenance! Look at maintenance mode as the REWARD for all your hard work. 🙂

  2. Jennifer

    This is a great series to start! I’m looking forward to getting to maintenance stage one day & I always learn a lot from your advice. One thing I’ve noticed in the past couple weeks, when I stopped tracking my activity on my Weight Watchers app, I stopped thinking it was OK to eat those points back. And I think I’m losing weight more easily because of it! You’re so right. It’s all about the deficit.

    1. Lisa Eirene

      Good for you! Glad you figured out a system that works for you and you’re seeing results.

  3. Marc

    I’m still on the journey to goal.

    1. Lisa Eirene

      Yeah…I figured that many of my readers are still on the journey to goal. No shame in that!

  4. Cynthia

    Thanks for laying things out so clearly. Sometimes it is easy to forget that there is nothing magical about all this. I am maintaining a 150 lb loss and entering the maintenance phase was very scary for me. Luckily, I had been meticulous about recording calories eaten and exercise for the two years it took me to lose the weight. I just kept on recording and experimented with adding calories a little at a time, inching up my monthly averages. Of course, I kept up with my daily exercise and resistance training. I especially like the part about eating back your exercise calories when beginning to maintain. That would have been a helpful way to think about it at the time. I just wish I could eat in your maintenance calorie range. I maintain at about 1700 calories per day. But I am probably older than you (I’m 50) and maybe shorter (5’7″). We are all different! I think that is why it is so important to track your intake. you have to know what works for you.

    1. Lisa Eirene

      I definitely think it’s different for everyone. The only reason I know my calorie range for maintaining is 1800-2200 or so is because that’s what I’ve been eating for years and have stayed the same weight (give or take 1-2 pounds depending on the time of the month). I also burn a pretty high number in the gym. 60-75 minutes in the gym for my usually burns 500-800 calories depending on the activity I’m doing. If I exercised less, I’d probably eat less too.

      Congrats on losing 150 pounds! It sounds like you did it in a healthy way and recording everything is working for you. Yes, there is no “magical” cure or answer for all of this. Just hard work. 🙂 You should be proud!

      Oh and I’m 5’5. Barely. 🙂

  5. Karen P

    Oh, yes!!! So true about eating more does not mean eating more of anything you want in massive quantities. I think that the more you are focused on setting up the “new normal” in weight maintenance the more success and longer you can stay at goal weight.

    That trial and error part. The balancing of finding how much you can eat , how exercise fits into the equation. I had a shift about 6 months in maintenance and I now require about 20g fewer carbs to maintain. Since I was weighing daily, I picked up on it fast and made adjustments. In my failed attempts at maintenance , I did go back to the way I used to eat, and the weight did come back.

    I really applaud you for doing a series of posts about weight maintenance. It’s a topic that’s not covered enough-IMO. Support from others in maintenance is key. Being able to ask questions from multiple resources is great.

    1. Lisa Eirene

      That’s really interesting that you discovered that fewer carbs are needed to maintain. That’s very specific and I think it’s great you were able to narrow it down like that. I haven’t really taken a look at that type of stuff–I’ve just been focusing on calories. It’s a good idea, though.

      Thank you Karen, I’m glad that people are enjoying the maintenance posts. I agree–there aren’t that many maintenance blogs out there. When I first discovered the blog world it was mainly people who were currently losing the weight, or were just into fitness. The bloggers who had a story like mine were few and far between. 🙁 It’s nice to hear from other maintainers though!

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