food Guest Post Losing weight Maintenance Maintenance 101 weight loss

Maintenance 101: Beware of Food Creep

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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15 Comments

  1. Biz

    Great guest post Lori! You continue to inspire people – keep up the great work!

    1. Lisa Eirene

      I agree! Lori is an inspiration!

  2. Nick Goodall

    They’re some great tips! Food creep is new to me, but I’ve never actually measured my portions anyway, so maybe that’s why.

    When it comes to going into the outside world, associations can massively affect what you do. If they all have fish and chips, what will you most likely go for? I find that a good way around this is to pre-order food, then you’re stuck, you’ve made the right decision when you are under no pressure! It might even help set a healthier tone for the table 🙂

    Have a great day!

    1. Lisa Eirene

      The term is new to me, but the concept is definitely not!

      I agree about the associations. It’s harder to resist things when everyone around you is having it — like potlucks and such. When I first started losing my weight I stopped going to happy hours with friends because it was really hard to stay on track!

  3. Lori

    Thanks for featuring me Lisa!

    1. Lisa Eirene

      My pleasure!

      I hope readers realize this is applicable to maintainers AND “losers”!

  4. Trevor

    I love your point about food creep. Though I measure food creep not in the amount of food I consume, but moreso the types of food.

    If I’m doing low carb then maybe just one cracker won’t hurt. And if one cracker’s ok then two’s probably not so bad either. And a bottle of beer with those crackers shouldn’t hurt that much. Might as well have some cookies for dessert too. And another beer.

    I’m the master of food creep. I’m a freakin’ food creep champ! I can creep any food into any meal no matter what diet I’m on.

    That’s why I keep my pantry so empty.

    Cheers!

    1. Lisa Eirene

      Ha!! I could totally relate to your comment. In fact, I had an internal debate with myself about going dairy free. I said, “well butter is ok. I’ll eat that but nothing else.” Then I said “well if butter is ok, cream in my coffee is ok.” Um, no!

  5. Joanne

    I often think maintaining is so much harder than dieting! But these tips are great and many of these faux pas are things that I am guilty of but need to stop!

    1. Lisa Eirene

      I think it works for both losing and maintaining. It’s all about bad habits and getting used to doing the “food creep”!

  6. Ali @ Peaches and Football

    Great to see you on here as a guest Lori. You both have done such an amazing job maintaining your weight losses. Quite the inspiration!

    1. Lisa Eirene

      I agree, Lori is an inspiration.

  7. Karen P

    This topic is spot on for maintenance. It is sooooo easy to let habits, portion sizes, and exercise start to shift. When it happens day by day- it’s not at as noticeable.

    I used these tools my first year- and I’ll need to use them the rest of my life, too.

    – daily weighing and graphing my weight. I pick a weight where I go into weight loss mode again
    – return to measuring my food
    -eliminate any food that still might be triggering me ( nuts!)
    – wear a pedometer and head back out for walk if I have fewer than 8,000 steps a day.

    Great suggestions, Lori.

    1. Lisa Eirene

      Those are good tools to keep up.

  8. Katie @ Runs for Cookies

    Love this, especially #2, something that I’ve had a hard time with in the past. I’m just now learning to let loose sometimes, and it’s working out well!

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