The FastDay Forum

Wow MaryAnne - well done. I am sooooo impress when I saw your total weightless, wonder if I ever manage that?

Of course you can, Wolfie!

Thanks again everyone!

To celebrate yesterday I had a muffin, chocolate covered rum balls, and snow balls (almond cookies dusted with powdered sugar). Then I had an insane sugar rush and felt a bit sick. So I skipped dinner. Thursday there will be champagne, not for me but a friend who got a really good job in Hong Kong. That will be the real celebration. I'll try to lay off the sugar!

MANY CONGRATS!
You are an inspiration to me & many others. Enjoy your holidays with the satisfaction of knowing this is something you can do for good.

What fantastic news, particularly after the set backs you have encountered on your journey. You should be very proud of your achievement.

Enjoy your holiday

This is great news, well done you!!

I am so pleased for you! I hope you have a wonderful New Year!

It is the one year anniversary of reaching my weight loss goal of 63kg. Today I weigh 65.1kg. I've weighed up to 69kg this year. My starting weight at the beginning of the diet was 87.6kg. I need to remind myself sometimes that in spite of not being on the exact number I want, I am doing well!

Maintenance has been a bit more of a struggle for me than a lot of people here. I have continued fasting, usually 3 times a week, sometime ADF. This has mostly resulted in pretty good maintenance. My weight gains have happened on holidays/work trips, where I didn't have much control over my food and didn't fast at all (though obviously should have tried harder to eat less!) It seems crazy with that much fasting I was only maintaing for most of the year.

I know the reason for this is that at some point, my non fast days got completely out of control. When in the weight loss phase, I was eating very healthily on non fast days, with small treats here and there. Then I just went mad for sweets on non fast days. I think it's work-related stress/depression. In any case, I think I have it under control now finally. I've been doing the Xmas challenge, and have gone from 68 to 65kg in a couple of months. I'll just keep working at it after the challenge is over until I get back to my goal weight.

I had this grand plan for maintenance. I even posted it before I reached goal (seems silly now, but I was worried I wouldn't stop losing weight, and would get a bit too addicted to it). It involved reducing the number of fast days until I was maintaining and not losing. I never even got to try it since I gained weight over the Xmas holiday and never got back to goal all year.

I spent a lot of time obsessing over the fact that my TDEE must be lower now than predicted based on my weight, age, etc. and read a lot about adaptive thermogenesis and altered metabolism after weight loss. The bottom line practically speaking is that my TDEE is what it is. I have to learn to live with it.

I think I made the mistake of thinking that I would get to fast less. Maybe I will and maybe I won't, but what I most certainly won't be able to do is go back to eating the way I did before. Even non-fast days shouldn't be the way I ate before, at least not on a regular basis. As sustainable as this WOE is, I think fasting fatigue is bound to set in, so I think learning to eat normally on non-fast days is really critical. And as I said, I do think I have this under control now.

I've been reading around a lot at different blogs, things people link to here etc. I think the most important lesson I've learned this year is that IF (or whatever changes one makes to lose weight) does have to become a WOE for life. I thought of it more as a back up plan, in case of any gains, but now I see a lot of fasting in my short-term future at least. I guess I should have realized this given the number of times I've lost loads then almost immediately put it back on. But for some reason, there's not nearly as much discussion out there about maintaining as there is about losing weight and I hadn't thought it through clearly enough on my own.

What I hope for in a year's time: to be maintaining a bit more steadily, at a slightly lower weight than I'm at now. I hope I can obsess about it less as well. I hope it becomes more natural. In the meantime, I'll keep weighing and fasting and trying to keep non-fast days under control. Hopefully my work situation will resolve--this will help immensely.

Happy Maintainversary @MaryAnn from a fellow struggled. I too thought I would be fasting less by now, and have been surprised by a slight upward creep despite not having cut down on my fasts. And yet some maintainers are doing brilliantly while hardly fasting at all any more.
Anyway, you have have regained only a small proportion of what you lost, you know why it happened and you are determined to do what it takes to meet your target for year 2. All the best.

and to you, too, @barbarita! I'm sorry you're struggling, but I'm glad I'm not the only one finding this difficult, if that makes any sense…

edit to add: glad isn't the right word. I don't like being alone.

Done in the best possible way! Congratulations, @MaryAnn!

Congratulations on your maintenance, @MaryAnn. You're not alone, I've retained the 4:3 pattern of fasting to maintain. For me, however, this is also influenced by the low muscle mass/low TDEE and that I find it easier to look forward to (what feels like) a reasonable amount of food on my non-fast days whereas I'd need to eat less than if I switched to 5:2, IYSWIM.

You've achieved a lot - even with a small regain, you're maintaining a radical weight loss at approx. 25% of your original weight. I wish you peace of mind in maintenance.

Considering how much weight you have lost, your accomplishment in staying near goal is considerable! Maintenance is always harder than losing, and the more you have lost, the tougher it can be.

No one wants to hear that maintenance requires the same diet as you ate losing the last few pounds, but that is the truth. And while you have to keep eating the diet, your body has depressed levels of leptin that incite you to eat, operating at an instinctual level in the brain way more powerful than reason.

Since this is true on every diet that produces weight loss, to cheer yourself up, you merely have to ask whether you would prefer to have to eat 1200 calories a day for the rest of your life to maintain or keep at the fasting pattern.

Alternatively, you might just cut the fasting back to a level you feel you can live with and accept that you will have to live with some gain. I ended up finding it much easier to maintain at 142-145 than at 137 after my year of significant weight loss in my 50s. The difference was only a couple pounds, but I didn't have to obsess about every bite to stay at 145 for a decade.

I am heading for a year of 5:2 and have been wondering if I will be able to sustain the fasting forever. I'm almost back to that 137 but if I end up back at 145 it won't be the end of the world. For now I am still enjoying fasting, so we'll see.

Congratulations MaryAnn! What an awesome accomplishment! So happy for you!

@MaryAnnYou have done so well and to be still there or thereabouts after a year is no mean feat. I am not anticipating an easy time on maintenance if I ever get there. Following my current fasting pattern I suspect my weight loss curve will flatten out and that will be my maintenance weight and I will have to keep fasting to sustain it. That may be the way for those of us with lifelong weight issues. So if I can do what you have done I will be happy. Well done I say.

A whole year in maintenance! Brilliant!
I love the way that you have described your ups and downs, and how a realistic WoE has to be followed if we are to avoid weight gain. 5:2 isn't a quick fix from which we can return to our previous 'normal' way of eating because eating that 'normal' food was how we put weight on. I hit my target just before Christmas last year too. Ok, so I didn't need to lose as much as many people, but I still found the initial weight loss MUCH easier than maintaining. Hopefully I'll work out a plan (that I don't need to think about all the time) in 2015.
Good luck to you @MaryAnn and everyone else too!