The Middle Way

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I'm now a month into maintenance. I hit 85kg, and told myself that that would be my maintaining weight. But then I obviously didn't ease off on my weight reduction habits enough, because I kept on losing more. So Team Marshall (Ann is always involved with these big decisions) decided that, rather than trying to maintain an exact weight, I would keep within a 3kg band - from 82kg to 85kg. I had dropped to 82.5kg, so the first thing I needed to do was put on a bit of weight to get me to the middle of the band (83.5kg).

Deliberately gaining weight was very difficult for me to get my head around! I had followed a pretty strict regime for the best part of two years, and I was nervous that once I started to eat different things, my weight would go up uncontrollably. So rather than really changing my eating habits, I tried to keep them the same, but just add in treats, but being careful that they were treats I would be able to stop having - so, for example, no cheese, which caused a lot of my problems to begin with! I have added the odd starter of garlic bread, I have used some nuts in cooking, and I have had more brown rice with dinner rather than all green veg. Not big changes, but I have now put on a kilo, and this morning I was exactly on the middle way - 83.5kg.

I like to think of it as the middle way, between getting very scrawny and getting fat again. But, like in the photo, it's difficult to keep to the middle way! One thing I have done is to fill in my food diary again, at least for a few days, just to make sure that these treats aren't too much of a treat. So far, so good.