What happens AFTER Goal?

What happens ... AFTER goal?

I think it's fair to say that there's a lot of anxiety that happens when we get close to goal.

I know I felt that way....in fact, I was terrified!  LOL....you worry, will I be able to maintain my weight loss? (after all, the statistics aren't great....fully 85% of people who lose the weight do NOT keep it off).  Will I regain it all?  Will I have to 'live on packets' the rest of my life? etc.

I wanted to share with you all what I did...and hope it helps some of you who are getting close to goal and worried about it (or just worried in general!) to feel better.

First of all, Transition exists for a reason. The idea is, to add food groups 'back in', one at a time, little by little....and work them into your food plan IF they make sense for you.

You BUILD up a menu of foods you like, HEALTHY foods.


TRANSITION IS WHERE THE "Changing my eating habits the rest of my life" THING  COMES IN!
And it really is an individual thing. A food that acts like a trigger for me may not be a trigger for you. So you have to be willing to take a deep breath and experiment.
CAREFULLY.  Under the guidance (hopefully) of a Coach who's been there....that helps.

For instance. When I got to transition the first week is veggies. You add back in starchy veggies....BUT....you don't do it all at once! You start by adding just an additional serving of the low glycemic veggies (you know, the ones you've been enjoying all along on the 5/1).
So it gets you 'into' eating more veggies. Which is a GOOD THING.

So....when you think about it, this is the 'final step' in getting you to LOVE your veggies and make them a PERMANENT HABIT!  (!!!)  RIght?

(by the way, the glycemic index charts are all in the Habits of Health book....for reference purposes).

Then the second week you add starchier veggies. So you pick...say you want to try corn again. Fine. One day you add 1/2 cup corn. And you SEE how you feel afterwards. Did it make you hungry? OK, maybe that's not a good veggie to keep in your overall food plan. No? It was OK? Great...it stays...(provided you liked it, too...our tastes DO change on this program as well!) 
Then maybe a potato...for me a sweet potato was like a MIRACLE, I couldn't believe how much I enjoyed that plain sweet potato with just a sprinkle of cinnamon on top!  No butter, no brown sugar, no marshmallow crap....just the plain sweet potato.
And it dawned on me....HELLO?

This is called LEARNING TO EAT HEALTHY FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE.

YES!  THAT is what Transition is all about.

Then I tried a white potato. Nope....made me hungry. And didn't satisfy me, not really. I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as the sweet potato. So you know what? White potatoes are 'off' my menu! Why bother? I don't adore them anymore (which I used to when I was obese) and they make me hungry (the carb content is just high enough to do that to me, obviously) so OUT they went from my food plan.

Then you do the same for fruits, and dairy, and then you add an additional lean (usually at lunch but whatever works for you), then whole grains. 
Whole grains is the scariest week by far...everyone's afraid of it....OMG a piece of bread is going to make me gain weight! But it's nothing to be afraid of, if you do it the way you're supposed to and go S-L-O-W-L-Y.

I found that whole grain pasta and brown rice are fine for me once in awhile, but NOT bread. For me, even 100% whole wheat bread didn't work out in the long run. Nope, made me hungry. So no biggie. Off it went. If I really want a 'sandwich' type thing, I'll do a whole wheat tortilla or something...but again, this isn't very often. By and large I 'spend' my whole grains on cereal or whole wheat pasta. And again, NOT every day. 

Fruit was an interesting week, as I thought I'd go krazy over being able to have strawberries again...because I used to love them so much I would eat them by the pound when I was overweight.
But now....strangely....they just didn't satisfy. Not nearly as much as cherries do, or even an orange or an apple or a nectarine.
Weird, huh?

Again, my tastebuds changed.

But the awesome thing was....just like the sweet potato, a single ORANGE tasted like HEAVEN to me. I mean honest to GOD, I'll pick an orange over a brownie now.

WHY? 

Because I know the orange won't 'betray' me.
It won't make me hungry for moremoremore.
It won't backfire and wind up on my hips.

Even AFTER I got to the END of transition, I STILL wouldn't touch 'real' cake or cookies or candy or any of that stuff. Because I KNEW it would 'set me off'.
And why DO that to myself?

Again, MY WHOLE PURPOSE WAS TO CHANGE MY EATING HABITS.

That's why I came here in the FIRST place! 

Not just to lose the weight....although of course I wanted to lose it! 
But to KEEP it off, permanently, and to do that I KNEW I had to change my eating. PERMANENTLY.

I had to develop a fondness for HEALTHY foods instead of sludge.

And you know what? I DID IT.  I DO prefer eating healthier foods now!

I'm not perfect....I've had my binges....but they were usually set off either by some emotional trigger (or more accurately, MULTIPLE emotional triggers) plus stresses in my life, PLUS a trigger 'food'...something I had around that was really 'on the edge' of what I could get away with in terms of sludgey-type foods....(and boy do I love to experiment sometimes...ugh...which is an ongoing thing I will struggle with forever, I know...) that set me off to the point where I overate it and then fell into the 'Oh well might as well eat what I want' deal in my head again.

And an orange doesn't do that. LOL.

What does it ... for me...are foods 'close' to the edge of sludge...like PB2 with chocolate...that's a trigger...or if I did Cool Whip again....OMG that would be a trigger, no matter if I CAN eat it or not "legally" in maintenance...that's NOT THE POINT!

The point is does it make me HUNGRIER? Does it 'set me off' thinking about how I 'need' to eat more of it, and then some of 'that', and 'that too', etc.?
If so it's OUT!  Period!

TSFL doesn't make these decisions for me. I do.

Because TSFL cannot 'dictate' and 'structure' my maintenance plan for me.

Every person is different and every person's goal weight is different, therefore every person's TEE is different.

So where I might have a TEE of 1760 calories a day, you might be able to get away with 1850....or even 1350.  It depends on your goal weight and your metabolism.

And EXPERIMENTATION. Not an easy thing for us to do when we're accustomed to the rigidity and structure of the 5/1 plan....but it's NECESSARY when we get to Transition and Maintenance, because again, TSFL can't 'prescribe' for everyone on a long-term basis!

And NO, you don't have to 'live on packets' the rest of your life.

That said, you may find -- as I have -- that those little MF packets are LIFESAVERS in terms of 100-calorie 'fuelings' as snacks in between meals.

And you'll probably find -- as I have -- that eating 6x a day is STILL a good idea, because it STILL works to keep hunger at bay.

AND...hopefully you'll find -- as I have -- that drinking 64 ozs. of water every day is STILL a good idea.

AND...hopefully you'll also find that lean proteins are 'better' than fatty or greasy ones (even in TASTE)....and that veggies are TERRIFIC! 

All of which combine to help us CHANGE OUR EATING HABITS.

THAT is the ultimate goal here. Not just to 'lose weight'.  I'll keep saying it over and over and over again, because it's what makes the DIFFERENCE between people who try and fail on this program, and people who try and SUCCEED.

The ones who SUCCEED understand, fully, to the depths of their SOULS, that they MUST change their eating habits...and they are COMMITTED to doing just that.

So they don't whine over that chocolate cake they can't eat anymore. They don't complain because they will never be able to eat like 'normal' people (and again, WHAT the heck IS normal anyway? With today's multiple allergies and problems...everything from Celiac disease to glucose intolerance to lactose intolerance to allergies to peanuts or strawberries or everything in between!)

 

TREAT IT LIKE AN ALLERGY.You are ALLERGIC to 'sludge'. Period.  USE that as an excuse, even, the next time you're out with friends and they're all drinking....or the next time you're at a family get-together and you have to say "NO" to whatever off plan food someone is pushing at you."I'm allergic. I break out in fat". PERIOD.  Tell yourself that. LIVE THAT. Understand that.
And you'll have it MADE.
And what's funny, too, is? Regarding the MF meals?  Most people wind up with around 3 MF meals a day......used as snacks...the pretzels, puffs, brownies, maybe the cereal or the pudding once in awhile ... and of course the bars.

Because the MF meals are still 'Miracle Foods'. They STILL don't make you hungry. They STILL satisfy and keep your energy level up. So why not?

I remember when I hit maintenance, specifically on the bars....I mean there are SO many protein bars on the market I was like rubbing my hands together all excited, I could get RID of the MF bars and save MONEY!  I could have these awesome looking NEW bars in the supermarket!

But a funny thing happened.
In all my searching and trying other bars on the market, NOTHING came close to the nutritional balance plus the taste plus the satisfaction of my hunger like the MF bars.

So guess where I wound up?  Right back with the MF bars.

That's the way I roll.  It works for ME.

But hey, ...it may be different for you.  That's the thing.

Maintenance is an INDIVIDUAL thing.

Keep on keepin' on!