It’s Friday, and today is the start of Labor Day Weekend.
It is common for dieters to lose focus
around special events, like holidays and vacations.

Think about what happens to us at Thanksgiving,
Halloween, or Christmas when we tend to “forget”
to pay close attention to our food intake. 

Imagine you are a (good) parent shopping at the mall
with your two pre-school children.
You wouldn’t get so preoccupied that you forgot
that you brought your kids along.
Instead, you’d always know where your children were
and what they were doing.

Most parents have the mental ability to stay alert,
even after the kids are in bed. This built-in awareness,
or focus, helps them know when their children are at risk.
Sometimes we don’t set out to overeat or ignore our diets,
we simply lose our focus – the ability to stay aware
of our eating plan while we enjoy our food together with
conversation and special activities.

We can have fun and still Focus.
We need a way to hold continual awareness
in spite of what’s going on around us.
It’s tough, but it can be done.

Part of staying focused is:

Remember:  Frequently remind ourselves about our food-plan and goals.
Pull Focus back quickly:  When slipping into old patterns, intentionally renew focus.
Stay Alert: Mentally identify our individual emotions in the situation.

  It is important that we don’t “forget”
about our weight-loss or maintenance efforts,
so we need to develop a built-in awareness to help us
stay focused on what it takes to live with the weight we want.

Avoidance of regaining lost weightis the primary goal of weight-maintenance.

Recently on a forum I frequently visit I read a post by a person who is working to maintain her weight-loss.  She had gained 5 lbs over time, and said:

“I can’t believe I let myself slip”

  I considered that statement and compared it with my own experience.
Over the past three years, my body has added about 5 - 7 lbs to its stabilized weight.

All the while, I’ve been working hard to keep that from happening, and I’m still working to lose that regain and to avoid gaining more.

In my own case, I wouldn’t call it “slipping”.  I didn’t “slip”.  It’s more like my body was being pulled along a surface by an unknown force,
while I was desperately working to cling, grasp, clutch, and hold on to any surface that would stabilize me and keep me from moving.

This process is still going on. Every day I work to keep my body at its “normal” weight, here in my maintenance weight range near the 115 lb area,even though my body thinks “normal” is over 200 lbs, and seems to inch my weight higher despite all my best efforts to keep this from happening.

Based on my past experience, I am well aware that if I chose to stop continually and consistently working to maintain my current weight, it wouldn’t be like missing my step
and falling off a curb to land on a nearby surface.
It would be more like jumping out of a plane without a parachute, my body rapidly hurling a long distance toward my potential destruction.

I’ve now been maintaining near my goal weight for 5 years and 7 months, and it takes more work to do it now than it did the first two years. It’s not surprising to me that less than 5% maintain their weight-loss, what surprises me is that the percentages are that high.

Some might think that this article is negative thinking,but I believe that   Acceptance of Reality is a positive and helpful thing. I am grateful that I was able to reach my weight goal,and I am grateful for every day that my body stays near it.

The Reduced Obese are constantly being lied to by the media, and marketing interests...including the medical profession, which serves to instill false expectations.

Weight loss is not easy, and long-term Maintenance is even harder.
It is a mistake to believe that maintaining a weight loss is easy, and that someday in our lifetime we can do it without a struggle.

   We need to get over it.  It ain’t happening.

With regard to weight management,
simplicity is a virtue.

Research exists indicating that
those who are successful at weight-loss
tend to focus on fewer rules than those
who fail in their weight-loss efforts.

It wouldn’t matter how simple or complicated the rules were,
if there were truly only one right way to eat for weight-management.
You would just have to do it.

But in fact, there are many different kinds of healthy diets.
Vegetarian, Mediterranean, low-calorie, low-fat,
“primitive”, low-carb, and various other diets
have been validated by scientific research.

However, it’s not only the food that matters.
How we perceive the dietary rules we live by
is also important.

So, we need to just choose one and start.
It doesn’t even have to be an official “diet”.
Some of the most successful dieters…meaning those who
have maintained a weight loss of at least 30 pounds for at least one year…
don’t follow a formal diet plan.

Instead they establish a handful of their own rules,
and work to follow them consistently.

Weight management is difficult for most of us, no matter what.
It requires resisting some “fattening” foods we like,
while also resisting the urge to overeat “healthy” foods.
Nothing can be done about these requirements.

However, it isn’t necessary to make weight management any more difficult
than it has to be, by forcing oneself into a complicated diet.
We can choose to keep it simple.

My latest recipe video, Chinese Chicken Salad,
is located here at DietHobby in RECIPES, Mealtime.

Normal.  
What is it exactly?

Normal can mean "average",
and it also has the connotation of "sane".

"Normal" weight is defined as a BMI of between 18.5 and 24.9
which for my own body is between 95 and 127 lbs.

Regarding food and eating,
what is normal for one person
isn't necessarily normal for another.

Information and misinformation,
the media, books, online sources are full of it.

 I recently re-read a 12 page New York Times article 
" Unhappy Meals" written by Michael Pollin in 2007.
that clearly demonstrates the current food and eating dilemna.

He has some good advice, but unfortunately,
I haven't found his proposed solution to be the resolution 
to my own food-intake and weight maintenance problem.

So what is the answer?
I don't know, but I keep looking.

                     
I work to stay open to new information.
By NEW information, I mean information that is new to me.
Right now I am investigating the Gnoll.org website of J. Stanton
and finding it quite interesting.

I also recently ordered from Amazon
a couple of books that I previously overlooked,

"The Gnoll Credo" by J. Stanton, and
"The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living": by Stephen Phinney.

I look forward to reading those books for my entertainment and education.

I am always experimenting with new diets and new food plans for myself,
however, I do not recommend specific diets and/or food plans for others.
We are all different, and my strong opinion is
that each of us needs to find what works for him or her individually.

DietHobby is here to share the Journey,
not to clearly set forth the path.

For those who are following my “Ask Grandma” videos
click to see my latest one: “How to Get Subscribers on YouTube”
which is located in DietHobby under RESOURCES, Videos, Ask Grandma.