Pearl One

Welcome to a five-week focus on maintenance (or what I call “preservation” (I’ll use both terms interchangeably until we all get used to the new word). Today in our first week we’re talking about how I’ve preserved weight loss for eighteen years to date.

So, you’ve done the hard work — the weight’s off, the jeans zip, the mirror gives a wink. But now comes the part no one talks about, the part where our eating plan gets boring, routines get stale, and you wonder if “forever” is really doable. Here’s the truth: weight loss maintenance doesn’t have to be bland, joyless, or rigid. In fact, it can sparkle — if you let it.

Maintaining Feels Like a Forever Job with No Excitement

I’m the first to say that one of the best habits I ever established was becoming super dedicated to tracking what I eat in a day. The habit is embedded into my heart and soul. I track on Christmas and on my birthday and on all travel. At the same time, I completely get that daily tracking, measuring, and looking for doughnut-substitutes over time becomes a major blah. Food can easily go from pleasure to tracking math to just giving up.

So let’s say that you’re now on the maintenance path. But once you’re well into your third month, the effort of maintaining feels boring, flat and pointless. I mean, who wants to preserve a thirty-pound weight loss?

(Yawn.)

Instead, it’s important to know that in our new, still young century we’re doing maintenance very differently than the last century where maintenance wasn’t even discussed.

I’ve learned that the most important part of preserving our original loss is making maintenance meaningful. We need to establish habits that feel natural to us, not performative. And to find ways to celebrate ourselves that feel enriching versus silly. Let’s build purpose and fun into our preservation-life. How to do it? The answers are inside our pen through journal-writing (see prompts in pearl two).

An example from my life: maintaining my weight loss became a done-deal after I had my babies. I knew that I didn’t want to go to the beach worrying about how I looked in my bathing suit and feeling uncomfortable the entire time because my jeans were cutting off my airway. I wanted my focus to be on my kids. The babies gave me purpose.

Today, I maintain for my one-day grandchildren, grand-dogs or grand-cats (a grand-bird would be wonderful too). I want to be fit and healthy enough to really be in their lives and not just watch from the couch. I also want to pass on to them how to deal with our food-gone-wild culture.

Maintenance isn’t about being perfect or having abounding willpower — it’s about being consistent, kind to yourself and curious. Some days you’ll feel like a rockstar. Some days you’ll just make it to bedtime. In either case, just continue on your Smart Eating Path. ♥

Pearl Two

The writing prompt pearl

The reasons for journal-writing are many but you’re looking to engage with your subconscious, to learn about new nooks and crannies inside of you, to examine your day-to-day and see what takes form. Based on pearl one, here are today’s writing prompts.

• How have you engaged with maintenance in the past? Be as specific as you can.
• What do you think about looking at maintenance from a new angle and a new century? Nobody talked about maintenance decades ago because nobody knew how to do. it. How do you think that impacted you?
• A successful maintenance is about using the strength and flexibility of our minds to preserve our original loss. It was never about running ten miles every other day or eating only salad, it starts in our minds. What does this mean for your life?
• How do you plan to manage the emotions that come from maintenance? Meaning how do you infuse purpose into your daily? How do you create an umbilical cord from your heart to your value system? ♥

Pearl Three

Sequencing is taken directly from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). The purpose of sequences is to help us move from reacting to circumstances to responding. I encourage you to do a sequence a day in your journal. Powerful stuff. Apply to your own life.

Automatic Sequence:

• Situation (be super concrete): I’ve gained five pounds after losing thirty.
• Automatic thought: I can’t believe it but here I go again. What is wrong with me?
• Feeling: irritation and hopelessness.
• Action: I react by overeating.
• Result: I always will be back and forth on my weight. It’s my own fault.

Chosen Sequence

• Situation (be super concrete): I’ve gained five pounds after losing thirty.
• Chosen thought: I’m fine. I’m doing something totally new here. There will be no drama, just curiosity. This is what Wendy says is part of the lifetime maintenance process.
• Feeling: empathy for myself and an interest in diving into what’s working well and what needs help.
• Action: I take time to read carefully through my tracker that I keep in the kitchen.
• Result: It takes two weeks, but I’m back inside the four-pound weight window I established for myself. ♥

Pearl Four

The book-dessert pearl

As I’ve mentioned I love memoirs, I joke that it’s because I’m nosy, but it really is more to do with feeling connected to others. The funny thing about Sally Field’s memoir In Pieces is that as the reader we get to know her better, but it soon becomes clear that the author has long valued privacy. In her story, she starts at the beginning with the women who raised her. She is open and vulnerable. I mean, who knew that an actress of her stature would have to go out on a limb to play Mary Todd in the movie Lincoln? In Pieces is a rich, lovely book-dessert. ♥

Pearl Five

It would be wonderful if you tell your doctors about our site the Inspired Eater.

Let me know in the comments below what you’d to more of: maintenance? Getting started? Dealing with the messy middle? I would love to hear from you.

Make it a fun week! And I hope to see you on Facebook.

♥, Wendy

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I am not an expert, doctor, surgeon, nurse, dietician, or nutritionist: the information within TheInspiredEater.com is based solely on my personal experience and is not intended to be used as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.