Maintenance for me means......Rethinking a few things......

Maintenance can be done any which way......

If your weight stable....... it's working and it's right for you !!!

My surgeon made the comment after I voiced that I eat less frequently than most and what he suggests..... 

His comment was "Just keep doing that than..... I never argue with success" (his words... not mine as I don't/won't claim any kind of success till I'm .... well, probably next to dead.)

Some things I've had to rethink and what works for me.........

- In maintenance you can increase your calories by either quantity or content..... I choose content most the time. By having more room in content I can have a much more varied spectrum of foods and food preparations.

I once said the difference between Maintenance and WL in a word is: Mayonnaise !

At almost 4 years out I still practice "under eating" I can tell you for sure that I am convinced (for me) my restriction is very much intact and  just about the same as about the 6 month mark.

By keeping my quantity in check allows me to eat more cals. from oils/fats which allows me to eat fried and breaded and fried foods when I choose to and still stay close to my numbers.

- I aim for my meals/feedings to be around 5 hours apart..... I find if I eat 2-3 hours apart like many do.... I get hungry every 2-3 hours, I guess your body gets used to the timing......

- Carbs..... yes I am carb sensitive...... love the damn things and if I ever have an undoing..... it's gonna be carbs and sugar for sure....

I don't have that Carb Monster that I hear about..... I'd say it's more like a Carb Gremlin..... I do feel the effect but it's not overwhelming, but it would be easy to feed.

I have sometimes ate carb based meals for extended periods of a week or so and not have had any real problems. I just keep the quantity way down. Yes, you can eat more carbs than dense protein......that's where I think the problem is for a lot of people....I try not to eat more than a couple ounces of carbs per meal when I'm in the situation.......

- The eat protein first rule....... Yes, it works..... great baseline/habit........ The work around for me.....Sometimes I'll eat veggie first...... let it settle and "slide" than get on with the protein..... this makes for very normal social eating.....

frisco

Ditto on most of this, and totally on the if it's working part..

I do currently eat every 3.5-4 hrs or so, but it seems to work best for me now.. that can change.. the whole point, things can and should be flexible as your needs do shift depending on cir****tance/age/activity.

I do eat till comfy full, and restriction has not changed since the middle-end stage of my first year out. I'm good with that.. even did a period of 3 days liquids, and at the end, had the same restriction.. full at 2.5 oz chicken, my benchmark non-slider protein.

Mayo and good butter/fats to me are essentials.. so I make it work. I feel better getting more of my cals from fats, I just do. And hell, I have blown away my drs notions.. my HDL went from a respectable high 40-something to 100!! My HDL is now higher than LDL, and LDL  got "fluffier" from eating the way I do.. Triglycerides were in the 50's and I wasn't fasting for my tests.. this was after my typical bfast. I eat about half my daily cals in fats (sounds like a lot, it's not in reality.) This works for me, when it doesn't't anymore.. I'll be shifting some things around.

On the timing, it really is a 'what works for you' kind of thing. I have always been a grazer. I would rather have around 200 six times a day than have richer foods less often. So that's what works for me.

I still do the eat protein first, and avoid all simple carbs 95% of the time (a treat now and then). I'm not super carb sensitive, I just don't enjoy the blood sugar roller coaster. I actually have to force fats into my diet as the foods I learned to enjoy during loss don't have many and I've stuck to those for the most part in maintenance.

Two years on Thursday for me.

Thanks for this post Frisco - it really spoke to me.  I have been playing too many games and I have seen a slow creep up of a .10 lb. here and there, which has been adding up to more than a pound gain.  The past couple of days, I have been keying in much more closely to not only what I'm eating, but to my body's signals.  Just had a typical breakfast for me.  I started feeling full a little more than 1/2 way through, and heard what you've said over and over to undereat your sleeve.  Instead of just pushing through and finishing the meal, which is what I have been doing when the amount was okay, I listened to my body and put the cover on the container and put it back in the fridge.  I read this post right after I did this and felt a calmness.  Thanks!  Mary