Maintenance?

Hi all,

I have ALMOST reached my goal weight, I've been ignoring the calorie counting for a couple of weeks and found its helped my metabolism out of a bit of a rut.  I am now in the 'healthy' BMI range and my body fat is also in the 'healthy' range so I am properly chuffed.  My question now is when/if I finally reach my goal weight is there any way to maintain it without always counting calories?  At the moment pretty much everything I eat gets logged and it takes up quite a chunk of my day where I could definately be doing more enjoyable things!

Any tips would be greatfully received!

I would say by that time you should have a good idea about how many calories are in the food you normally eat, so you should be able to just guess at whether you are eating enough.  If it helps, count for a couple weeks of maintenance to get used to the portions at that amount of calories. 

One recomendation i've heard is instead of having a strict goal have a range.  For example if your goal is 130 try to stay between 125 and 135.  Once you stop counting continue weighing yourself how ever often you normally would and if you start going up to around the higher end of your range tweak things a bit until you are closer to the middle.  Hopefully in time you can weigh yourself less if you want to illiminate that, although if you need to keep doing that it will take a lot less time then counting all your calories at least.

Another possibility is to make a chart, list, or record of the meals/foods you eat most often and give them an accurate calorie total.  Once you know approximately how many calories are in foods you eat most often, it is pretty easy at the end of the day (or at the start of the day if you have a pretty good idea of what you are going to eat) to guestimate about how many calories you are going to consume.  For example: if I know I am going to eat steel-cut oats and juice for breakfast, 6 egg whites with bacon bits for lunch, and shredded cabbage with light chicken meat for supper, and know that I generally snack on walnuts, apples, and baby carrots at some point of the day, it is very easy for me to guestimate  how many calories I consumed or will consume for the day.  I made a spreadsheet with all the meals and snacks that I eat on a regular basis. 

I have a lot more free time than you do, so I plan to go back to logging my calories accurately each day; but for the last 10 days or so, I have been just guestimating and I have found that my weight, overall, has stayed in my maintenance window.