A little rant about life in maintenance...
This is a vent/rant whatever you want to call it about how little understanding there is for the needs of the maintainer. From thin people, from heavy people, from dieters and not... maintainers of weight loss are misunderstood by all.
People just don't realize the battle doesn't end when you're thin. In fact, it only gets fractionally easier. You expect this dramatic change in maintenace but it's really not much different at all from the weight loss part of the diet. That's the truth. The main way it's different is that instead of worrying about stalling, now you worry about gaining.
I mean, everyone logically understands that, but in practice they don't actually know what that statement entails. Think of it like this: pretend that not gaining was a goal you wanted as bad as not stalling. All of us are dieters and we can relate to the feeling of stalling, so if I compare gaining to that maybe it's easier to understand.
If you want to not gain (the same way dieters want to not stall) It means not shrugging off a pig out at a buffet. It means caring and worrying a bit because your pants are getting tighter (or in the case of dieters, not getting bigger). It means paying attention and deciding what to do over a steady pound gain on the scale (or for dieters, a scale that hasn't moved in weeks). Basically, maintenance means vigilance and no one really understands that. Not the naturally thin, not the dieters, no one knows what maintenance is about except the maintainers. It makes life difficult, being made to feel like you're obsessed all the time.
Look, I understand. I realize it's almost impossible to truly know what maintenance is about until you've been there. I realize to others it seems needless and silly and strange and excessive. I don't expect people to "get it". But you know, I DO expect you to stop insisting I have a psychological problem because I worry about a pound. Yes, I look thin. No, I am not naturally that way. Yes, a pound is a big deal when your body can very easily accumulate 170 of them in short order. I lost most of that in a year. That means I can gain it back even faster. This is reality.
I'm sick and tired of restating over and over the difference between keeping off massive obesity (rational control of weight problem), and anorexia (irrationality, self destructive compulsive emaciation). I appreciate the good intent of well meaning individuals, but please when I insist that I have self assessed and am certain I am NOT significantly more dysfunctional in eating than any other person with a valid weight problem... believe me, ok? Even if you don't believe me, please please PLEASE stop insisting ok?
The thing of it is it smacks of hypocricy. It's somehow no longer acceptable to be weight conscious once you've achieved what one sets out to achieve via watching weight. How much sense does that make? Is yo-yo dieting a cultural obsession or what? No one says anything about it if you're still heavy, in fact you're praised. You bond with others losing. It feels good. Once you've reached a certain weight suddenly people expect you to just magically become a naturally thin person. No one understands how it is not an option to be indifferent when you are suppressing your weight by controlling what you eat. If I don't continue to pay attention and thus, yes, worry how else is this 170 pounds going to stay off my body? The slips will accumulate, this is a fact. Did going on LC to lose weight somehow change reality? Am I now immune to the cumulative fattening power of buffets? Or to the hyperinsuliemic & hypoglycemic effect on my body from too many nights of too many carbs? Is a nip in the thighs of my pants somehow less indicative of a weight gain trend than it was before I lost weight?
Now that I am actually here, I have a profound understanding of why almost everyone regains weight with time. It's not that the diet itself is too hard... it's that our society and lack of tolerance for weight control that makes it too hard. You feel intense pressure to "be normal" (which, unless you're lucky, means eating so as to become fat). If you're not "loosened up" about eating and therefore on your way to regaining, you're "too obsessed" in their eyes. When you've lost people actually encourage you to abandon your good habits, they make you feel like it's some how not as necessary anymore or even abnormal.
In our society, it seems the only acceptable way to be is fat and on a weight loss diet. Fat and complacent is morally offensive. Ex-fat and therefore "obsessed" is mentally ill. Ironically enough, the greatest acceptance I ever felt regarding weight was those few months I was losing it believe it or not. As a restricted eater not trying to lose more weight, I feel almost as much of an outsider as I did when I was fat and gaining. I feel like this is "unnecessary" because I've been told so often that it is. I'm starting to believe it, scary enough, and I know that is the message that leads you back to the plus sized store.
Is it any wonder so few fail to keep it off long term, when our entire society has no understanding of weight maintenance?
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