maintaining for 3 months now!! (sort of)

Hey everyone...I finally hit my goal of 199 on May 1. I dropped from a little over 280, down to 199 in about 18 months. Since then, I have been really stressed over maintaining. Seems so many people do the yo-yo thing. I was determined to not do that. 

I have kept up the exercise and increased my calories to about 2500-2600. So far in three months, I have continued to lose about 8 more pounds. I guess I would rather still drop the occasional pound than put it on.

Strange, but I was so worried about maintenance that I am almost as excited about keeping it off as I was losing it in the first place. I think I have a phat-phobia.

1. Outstanding!  Going from 280 to 199 is a remarkable thing.  Losing 8 more pounds in 3 months is a sensible way to lose weight, if you still need to lose it.
2. I wouldn't be stressed about maintaining.  In my case, lately I have done a bit of the "yo-yoing" mainly because of my wife's BD, a family reunion-vacation, our anniversary, broken exercise equipment, a weight exepriment, etc.  But I will get back to my target window of 168-173 in a couple of days.  As long as you had the mind-set to lose the weight, the same strong mind-set should serve you as you maintain.  Most of us have mini weight gains that we don't let throw us back into overeating and underexercising.
3. I am sort of the opposite; the excitement for me was losing the weight (45 pounds in less than 3 months); maintaining is a bit more difficult for me in terms of keeping the challenge edge going.  A while back I dropped another 5-6 pounds just for the excitement of trying it; it was not the right thing to do, and now I am working to get back to my weight window after some yoo-yoing the wrong way.