Yup - I confess. The thought of being on maintenance now is pretty frightening. Probably why I kept revising my goal weight lower and lower -- so I'd never have to deal with this part. But now I'm here and I'm finding it an interesting place to be in.
For one thing...I'm finding it hard not to get into a mindset where certain foods are okay because, gee, I'm not trying to lose anymore! I'm trying to catch this kind of disordered thinking before hand but its a tough one to combat.
I suddenly find myself hungrier than ever. But I can't seem to distinguish anatomical hunger from psychological hunger. Suddenly I'm feeling like I'm losing control of food again. This is odd because I'm keeping a pretty detailed food diary and following it pretty closely. Except for today when I ate 3 of my 6 meals within a 2 hour period
Taking stock of why I feel out of control:
1. 6 meticulously planned meals a day leaves me with issues around the anticipation of the next meal i.e. I begin to crave it before I'm due to eat it.
2. 6 meals also means I never get truly hungry during the day -- maybe I'm losing touch with what hungry feels like?
3. Not only am I at goal weight, I'm also coming to the end of my 12 week BFL program and I just ran my 5k. Meeting 3 goals at the same time is leaving me feeling a bit empty. I'm certainly planning to set a new bunch for the next "cycle" (and have already registered for my next race) but I think there may be a bit of mourning the old goals?
So what's next? I think I need to go "back" to 3 squares a day. While I understand the logic behind small, evenly spaced meals, its not worth it if its going to drive me crazy -- plus I think I eat more. Its wierd that most people get heavy when they don't monitor their intake properly...I get stalled due to over-monitoring!
Second, time to get those new goals in place. I want to run my next 5k (mother's day) faster than 32 minutes and will need to train accordingly. Also, will sit down and establish a weight-training goal for upper body for 12 weeks.
Thanks for listening! Its funny how I already knew all this stuff, but writing it out makes it more real and now I feel like I can cope again.
Lisa