Going for the brass ring

This morning I was complaining to my husband about how frustrated I am with how slow I'm losing weight lately, and I'm sick of being hungry all the time. He tried to encourage me by telling me to hang in there, and once I get to goal, maintenance will be easy. He has no idea how wrong he is with that statement. Losing weight is hard, maintaining goal weight is harder(and historically impossible for me).

I have to cut my husband some slack for making such an inane statement about maintaining a significant weight loss. His experience with losing weight and maintaining the loss is significantly different than mine. When he graduated college about 27 years ago, he had gained 30 pounds. Yes folks, he was a whopper at 180 (he's 5' 9"). He said he was freaked out by how "fat" he had gotten during college. He went on a chicken and vegetable diet and became an exercise nut. Racquetball 3-4 times a week, running 10 miles several times a week, and got into scuba diving and became a certified dive instructor. He quickly lost the weight and kept it off for several years until recently when he starting gaining weight. He's now struggling along with me trying to lose weight. His experience 27 years ago is very different than mine. I'm a female, older than he was when he lost the weight, and losing and maintaining a 100-pound weight loss is different than 30 pounds. So I'll excuse him for his crazy line of thinking.

I've been at goal three times in the last 10 years, and I know it's the hardest part of this entire process. The first time I stayed at goal for about five minutes, seriously, I'm not kidding. I started gaining weight the next day. I was below goal at 126 pounds and according to my friends, I resembled an Auschwitz victim. I loved it, wearing a size 6 is a wonderful feeling, although it was very fleeting. The other two times I maintained my goal of 135 for a few months. I've never maintained for any significant length of time.

To prove how hard it is to stay at goal, you can read the WW 200+ message board. People post the same thing over and over again, about how they lost blank pounds and then gained it all back. It scares me. I know that feeling of losing control and bingeing, gaining weight, my clothes getting too tight, buying bigger sizes, the frustration, depression, embarassment and self-hatred of gaining weight. There are only negative emotions connected with weight gain. I've been down that road too many times, and I refuse to do it again.

I need to lose 46.4 to reach goal weight of 135. I'm really trying to think this through this time around, to focus on the going for the brass ring - how am I going to maintain my weight loss? One thing I've accepted is that I will always have to be a little bit hungry. I've talked to my skinny friends and they say they're not hungry all the time (go figure, I can't relate). If they are hungry, they eat. To them, it's as simple as that to maintain their skinny weight. I obviously have some sort of defect that makes me think I'm hungry all the time. I can eat a meal and want to eat again in an hour. I never feel full, and if I do, it doesn't last long. If I followed my skinny friends lead and ate when I was hungry, I'd be as big as a house in a matter of months.

The second thing I've accepted is exercise. I need to have at least an hour of exercise a day, six or seven days a week. I've accepted this and it's not such a big deal anymore. Sometimes it seems tedious, and I'd really rather be doing something else, anything else, but exercise is not optional for weight loss or maintenance.

I know that brass ring can be mine, and I want it so bad!