Maintenance--Which do you find most difficult?

I've only been in the true "maintenance" stage a couple of weeks at most.  However, I am firmly committed to my new, healthy diet and honestly believe I will have little trouble maintaining it the rest of my life, including watching how many calories I consume daily (2200-2500 or so).  However, the exercise part, I know, will be another matter.  Sure, I will walk a few times a week; but I am not convinced I will ride the exercise bike, lift weights, hit the heavy bag, and do crunchers the rest of my life.  I certainly intend to keep exercising, but I know it is going to be very difficult to stay in that mind set, although it is easy right now.

Ok, what aspect of "maintenance" has been the most difficult for you?  Of these four choices, which best fits you?  1) diet is more difficult  2) exercise is more difficult  3) neither are difficult  4) both are difficult.  Thanks in advance if you care to share your thoughts about the difficulty or lack of it in "maintaining."

I'm only just starting to maintain (well, knowingly anyway)  and from this start and past experience, exercising is definitely going to be more difficult for me! I know I can eat healthily, with good portions and hopefully very few cheat days...but I'm not an exercise enthusiast! In the summer, walking the dog and trying to keep up with yoga, pilates, etc. right now isn't difficult. Biking and such...yeah, already it is harder to continue. Now when school starts up again, it will definitely be even more difficult!

exercise for me too.

I only started gaining 2 years ago and before that I did NO deliberate exercise and maintained, taking it for granted. I've finally lost most of what I gained but 31 years of non-exercise is a hard habit to break.

Here's what works for me- I really like outdoor manual labor. Yard work, ranking wood, haying, stuff like that. I don't consider it exercise but it really burns the calories. Summer is awesome for me- mowing the lawn with a push mower for an hour burns roughly 289 calories. It takes me 2 hours to mow and I do it twice a week! I love it!!

Winter will be difficult for me as there isn't much to do outside.

lunaropal: I hope that with school starting up, you will be burning those cals. just because you will be so busy.  Walking and playing with your dog IS good exercise; best of luck with the yoga and pilates.

qmwillcand: Excellent point about the outdoor activities.  I know what you mean about winter.  For some reason, shoveling snow by hand (my own property only LOL) is a lot of fun for me; unfortunately, we don't seem to get much snow where I live any more.  The last 3 or 4 winters have been very light in the snow department.  I agree about the outdoor aspect to your exercising--you wouldn't even need to worry about organized exercise.

Both for me!

I have to maintain on 1600 calories a day. Talk about being effed! I never worked out a day in my life before I started maintaining (didnt work out while dieting). So I feel like I'm still dieting + exercise on a daily basis. A lot of people lose weight on more than 1600 cals, but not me! That's my sedentary maintenance. If I want to have a burger, best believe I'm at the gym. Some cocktails? Don't get me started :) I work out 4-5 days a week, mostly cardio to burn off the cals that I've consumed on the weekend.

It's rough, but life goes on :)

x12star17x: That sounds like a pretty rough road to maintain.  I am hoping that eventually as you exercise, you build some muscle and thus you can increase your calorie intake and still keep the weight you want.  You must have a lot of fortitude to be able to keep the balance.  Hopefully, what you do for cardio burn is fun and goes fast.  Keep up the good work!

I have cut back on my walking time (finally recovered from a 3-week hiatus from walking because of a really nasty blister) to one hour (I used to go two), but I try to walk a lot faster now.  I like walking--it and my 20 minutes of weights are the two exercises I don't mind.  The 30 minutes of exercise bike keeping the heart rate above 140 is definitely not my favorite thing to do.  I don't really like crunchers, either, but I only do them 7-10 minutes.  The heavy bag is OK for the first few minutes, but by the time 15 minutes rolls around, I've had enough.  If I do the exercise bike for 60 minutes, slower, it is just plain boring, even with the TV earplugs in.

I find it all pretty easy, it's a lifestyle change, and after losing 80 pounds twice, I'm going to be sure to keep it off this time. your body tells you when to excersize, and tells you when to eat, just listen to your body, it knows what you need. I've been maintaining at 153-155 for 6 months now, with a 2500-3300 calorie per day diet.

Silly as this might sound, everything is as difficult as you make it out to be. By the time you are used to losing/maintaining, you have probably developed healthy new habits, so the only bumps in the road come from you sabotaging yourself. Just my two cents there. :) And yes, I do it too, consciously and willingly, it keeps me sane (in moderation, of course).

ily51:  That is an interesting point about one's sabotaging him/herself.  I also think a person sometimes has peers who can sabotage him/her if they try to entice a person to go back to unhealthy eating and drinking.

I find eating healthy easy--I do,however, about once every 2 or 3 weeks have some fun by overindulging.  I shall continue to do this, as it helps me find some fun in the overall dieting. I really like shopping for food, preparing meals, researching healthy foods, and even doing the cleanup, so the eating healthy has been a snap for me.

I find doing "easy" exercise such as walking at 3.6 mph relatively easy.

I find doing 20 minutes of weights easy.  Nothing about any of this had changed during the last 4 and 1/2 months.  The things I liked, I still like, and the exercises I didn't like, I still don't like.

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I will never find doing 30 minutes of fast-action cardio easy nor all that much fun.  No matter  how I set my mind to it and no matter what I watch and listen to on my TV, I just don't enjoy 30 minutes of cardio-burn.  I have tried hard to get into the proper mind frame and not make it difficult to do, but I have had no luck in that regard.  I can't jump rope or run (2 activities I used to love doing) because of knee problems.  That would solve my distaste for cardio (getting my heart rate above 140 for 30 minutes).  But I am taking your advice in this regard: since I only ride the exercise bike 30 minutes at a fast pace (for me), I have convinced myself that it is something I can keep in my exercise/diet regimen.