The ups and downs (literally) of weight loss maintenance….

Here I am in week 6 of my weight loss maintenance phase, and I find myself with a very odd problem (at least for me). My weight is too low. I overshot my goal of 135, and am hovering around 131. This is still not a bad weight for me (BMI=19), but I’m not supposed to go much lower (129 is the bottom limit of my healthy BMI). So….oh darn, I have to GAIN weight!

My Jenny Craig consultant was very firm with me at our last meeting. I am supposed to double my fat shares (woo hoo) and make sure that I eat everything on my 1700 calorie menu. She told me that in her years at Jenny, she had never had this problem before. Leave it to me to set dieting history!

I think the problem is a very simple one. As I’ve lost weight, I’ve naturally felt a lot more energetic, and I’m doing a better job burning off those calories. Mr. F is very anxious for school to start next week, as I’ve set him many projects this summer. We painted our kitchen, filled in much of our backyard with decorative rock (watering a lawn in my part of California is becoming prohibitively expensive), built a new platform bed, and redid our closet with ClosetMaid. We added a second walk each day, bringing our total to about 4 miles. So those calories just don’t go as far as they used to go.

Mr. F has a solution, at least for this week. Wednesday is our 35th anniversary, and to celebrate, he’s preparing a South African style chicken pie. Needless to say, most chicken pie recipes are not exactly low cal. Add in the amarula carrot cake we all enjoy, and a glass of wine, and my guess is that 135 will not be a problem for me next Friday.