Maintenance and how to stop losing

Hey everyone. I have hit maintenance, and am finding I'm still losing. Slowly, but losing. While I love it, I really don't want to get too thin and be forced to gain weight. I thought I would maintain at 155, and I was 149 this morning. 

My calories are about 1400 a day. I still track on MFP. 

Do you think my body will just stop when it is ready to? Or do I have to intervene?

Thanks!

It is better to get too skinny.  You will not be forced to gain weight.  Your body will stop losing when it is ready.  It will also have a period of bounce-back regain while it adjusts. 

You have hit a goal weight, but true maintenance starts at about year three.  For now, just continue to eat according to your plan and let your body find its sweet spot. 

Too skinny might last for a year of so.  Just enjoy it.  My surgeon recommends a cushion of ten, twenty or even thirty pounds under his goal during the losing period.  It makes bounce-back much easier to go through. 

Wow really?! I didn't really realize that. I have been pretty much staying the same as when I was in losing mode. Not much else is changed, except maybe a little more food. 

I stayed the same for more than a year.  My goal is 136, my body stopped at 128.  My surgeon kept telling me to try to lose more because of bounce-back and I just laughed and did not believe him.

Then at month 30 I gained three pounds and gained three pounds a month for four months.  That is when I finally accepted that the honeymoon was over and tried to get back down to 128.  I never accomplished that, but have worked hard not to regain.

If I slack off, then weight will come on quite quickly.  I will be seven years out in October.  I have accepted that this is for life and I will always have to watch.  I weigh every morning.  I track with My Fitness Pal, I go to the gym. I avoid white carbs and concentrate on protein and lots of water.

The surgery helped by getting the weight off, but the rest is up to me.

One statistic that I keep in mind is that my year five, fifty percent of people have regained 50 percent of their lost weight.  That is why so many people will tell you that the surgery does not work.

All the surgery does is get you down to a level playing field with those who are never obese, but you have to do the work to stay there.  Regain happens if you do not work to stop it.

How tall are you? I'd guess 5'6". For someone 5'6", you can get a weight of 110 before you reach below the healthy range on the BMI chart. You look great in your pictures on your blog. Definitely not "too thin". You are only a year out. By year three getting too thin is not an issue for the overwhelming majority of us.

I would keep doing what you are doing. 1400 sounds reasonable. You could possibly add 100 more and see what that does, but I would only add healthy things. Adding unhealthy foods just for calories seems to backfire for most people in the end.

I just went in to an online calculator for basal metabolic rate, the number of calories we burn if we do nothing at all, just sit totally still in a chair all day. They aren't all that reliable because they generalise. But not knowing your details, I put in female, 5' 4", 140lbs, age 40. That gave a BMR of 1377.  So my hypothetical person is using almost 1400 cals a day just by being alive. 

So you are almost certainly burning more than 1400 calories a day. 

If you are still losing you are not in maintenance!!  I don't know where the thought came that you could determine a particular weight and just decide you were done (and you are not alone in this thought) - I think our bodies are way cleverer than that ...

You should continue to eat 1400-1800 calories per day and see where you end up - once you have stayed at a weight for several months, then you can probably think that you are in maintenance.

Many many of us lose more than we think we will (or even want to) and find that we are able to regain to a comfortable weight at about 3-4 years.  

I have yet to hear of anyone that disappeared completely