Maintenance means simply guarding the status quo, but it requires a little monitoring—on the scale, in your portions, and in your daily activities. Yet, when suggesting that you monitor your weight, we are out of step with some of the clinicians and researchers of our day. For example, those who research and serve individuals with eating disorders say to avoid the scale, that getting on daily is indicative of an eating disorder. Writers who advocate intuitive eating and “Health at Every Size (HAES)” would choose to monitor inner body sensations of hunger and fullness over scrutinizing what’s on the plate or the scale. Lastly, although we say to monitor your physical activity, the last thing we want to be are fitness Nazis. We’ll leave that to the exercise anorexics who are around every corner of the Internet.

Yes, maintenance does require a little vigilance. But it is so different from dieting. My partner just mentioned that she went to bed hungry two nights ago. An unpleasant memory immediately rushed into my head: The entire eight months that I dieted, I went to bed hungry nearly every night. And that’s not the whole story, either. For every pound of fat I lost, I also lost about a third of a pound of lean tissue. So, no, maintenance is not like dieting. You never have to be hungry and you preserve your lean muscle. Maintenance is that wonderful state of equilibrium that tells you you are fine the way you are.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I naturally fell into maintenance when my body refused the dieting state. Week-to-week, I will take the easier road and maintain my current weight. Maybe I will try losing once again if run across a nice patch of willpower.

Good intentions are important, as are good ideas. But we don’t make permanent changes in our lives without good habits. How long does it take to establish a new habit? We have heard people say that you can blaze a trail toward better health in as little as six weeks. In my experience, it takes much longer than that. However, established habits, by their very nature, stick with you.

What habits am I talking about? Specifically fixing and eating nutritious foods. I have been standing helplessly by during a period of weight gain. In examining what I am eating and doing, I’m pleased to see that my basic eating patterns are intact. My diet is rich in fresh fruits and vegetables, beans, and lean proteins. Have other things weaseled their way into my daily eating patterns? You bet they have, but the foundation is intact.

As the completion of our book gets closer, I wonder what I can safely say about weight management. I have not managed my own very well, but I am a dramatically different woman from who I was in 2016 when I went on Weight Watchers for the umpteenth time, determined to make permanent changes. I can say without a doubt that have much better eating habits now!

Today is another gym day, and I have to say I’m looking forward to it. Since the gyms closed with the pandemic, we have diligently walked several times each week and taken online exercise classes. Nonetheless, when we got back to the gym, we quickly found that we had lost a lot of ground. Through this experience, I’ve learned that, for real fitness, I have to challenge my body in a number of ways. The gym affords me many ways to work out.

But what is physical fitness? I know I have been fit at times of my life when I’ve had a really good gym habit going on, but my parameters of fitness have changed with aging. I can’t do what I did at 38 anymore, but I feel pretty good despite having two new knees that I’m just now learning to use. My 68-year-old body demands that I use lower weights than I once did. Karen reminds me that it’s not the weight that brings strength, but working each muscle to exhaustion. Good advice, Sis!

There is something sacred about a beginning, whether it be the first strains of your favorite song or getting back to a beloved routine. My intention is to get fit, by which I mean different things from what I meant 30 years ago. At this stage of life, I plan to work every muscle group a couple of times a week so that I can get up from the floor, walk a couple of flights of stairs, and put in a full day of activity without as much as thinking about it. What does “fitness” mean to you?

Beginning in 2020, my partner and I suddenly and completely quit our gym habit. Why, you ask? You’ll remember how the COVID-19 pandemic closed everything down. The YMCA provided us with online classes and we participated from our little living room, but we never got the kind of workout we did by working out.

Beginning a week ago, we went back to the gym and I can feel every muscle in my body this morning. I used to bob up and down on the elliptical for a half hour and, the last time I went, I could only handle five minutes before I hobbled over to the treadmill to finish the half-hour. The physical therapist recommended that I use the machines to avoid injuries, so I did that. Only I had to keep the weights very low. And I left the gym exhausted.

Between a pandemic and two knee replacements, I’m in pretty rough shape. However, I’m glad to get back to the gym and I feel motivated to get into some semblance of physical fitness. It’s never too late to put new demands on the body and to get a move on. Karen, who stayed at the gym throughout, probably has a very different story. I’m sure you have a story of how you handled fitness during the pandemic as well. Drop us a line and let us know

I had a retirement event at the university yesterday and I dithered about what to wear. Since I’ve seen my colleagues, we had a major pandemic, I retired, and I put on weight. I wanted to look my best as I’d be behind a podium with a mike for at least a few minutes. And one of the things I learned from 25 years of university teaching is that the person behind the podium is uniformly scrutinized, so I wasn’t imagining the exam to come.

This brings me to a new line of thought, so bear with me. I absolutely love the TV Show “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” a 1950’s housewife-come-comedienne who seems to solve all her problems with an adorable outfit. Even if you don’t love stand-up comedy, you’ll love the clothes—the show is non-stop eye candy. Well, I solved my problem with clothes, Midge Maisel-style: low-cut skimmers on my feet, darling black trousers with pearl buttons down the leg, and a sharp black sweater with an Indian design. My new black and gold glasses finished off the collegiate look. Cute!

So, if you ever feel you don’t look your best and you are hesitating to go to that party or event, take a page out of Midge Maisel’s playbook. Buy a new outfit, or, as my mother sometimes advises me “Go into your other closet, dear. You’ll find something.” We can always look our best at any size—and it’s a real confidence booster to know it

My partner and I are preparing to entertain our book club group. Well, I use the term “book club” loosely, as we generally have a brief discussion of our monthly selection followed by a leisurely feast comprised of dishes that we prepare in the theme of the book. Over the past four years, we have had meals that vary from simple fare to elaborate productions.

This month’s book was “Teacher Man” by Frank McCourt. Although the author is thoroughly Irish, the book is an American work, taking place in the New York City public schools. So, what will we have? On what promises to be a beautiful May day, we’re having a picnic in our backyard: hamburgers, corn-on-the-cob, potato salad, and apple pie a la mode.

One thing I have noticed about our book club (really, our dinner club), is that I’m susceptible to peer pressure. There was a time when I would resist desert, but I caught some flack, so I started just accepting the slice of galette or crock of crème brulee. Not only that but once I started saying “yes” once a month, it was easy to start saying “yes” to dessert every day. Surprisingly, the “yes-ing” is nearly impossible to reverse.

In our upcoming book, Stop Losing and Win, Karen and I tackle the family and friend dilemma. It’s a fact of life: People want you to eat like them and deviating is not necessarily tolerated. The pressure to eat can undo the very best intentions, but we never read about how to deal with peer pressure in diet books. Not until now!

One of the things Karen and I do in our upcoming book, Stop Losing and Win, is to combine ideas from intuitive eating and what we call “planful” eating. Intuitive eating was popularized in Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch’s book titled (you guessed it!) Intuitive Eating. The ideas are simple but very powerful: tune in to your body’s signals of hunger and comfortable fullness and eat exactly what you crave. We love the idea of leaving “dieting culture” behind and instead trusting our bodies to give us the right signals.

At the same time, we want to ensure that we are eating a nutritious diet. Planful eating provides you with the opportunity to put a finger on the scale by keeping nutritious choices always within reach. We recommend shopping around the periphery of the grocery store, stocking up on beautiful fruits and vegetables as well as lean proteins such as yogurt, eggs, fish, seafood, legumes, and chicken, preparing these beautiful foods, and serving them to yourself whenever you want them. By doing this, you are hedging your bets that you will eat a lean, nutritious diet much of the time.

This blend of intuitive and planful eating encourages you to listen to your body’s signals while maximizing the possibility that you will choose nutritious foods and recipes made from ingredients that are bursting with life. By shopping for nutritious foods, preparing them, and having them readily available in your home, you are more likely to choose them. To sum up, we recommend that you tune into your body to learn when and what to eat and when to stop. We also suggest that you increase the likelihood that many of your choices will be nutritious.

The scale is both my enemy and my ally. Lately, I have found the benefit of getting on the thing each day simply because I am going through a period of flux. The scale was ticking up each week until I started getting on it daily again. Then I was able to stop and reverse this upward trend. A week was just too long to wait to know my weight!

It’s important for each individual to figure out how and when to use the scale. For some, constant, daily weighing is tantamount to an eating disorder. For others, the scale provides feedback and guidance for the day. In other words, the scale can be a reinforcer and an early warning system. It can also become a compulsive habit that robs people of their happiness and peace of mind. That is why we will never recommend any one pattern or decision concerning how you might use your bathroom scale.

Every topic surrounding weight, body size, and body image is loaded. And so many of us struggle with these issues that weight consciousness might be considered the norm. In light of our universal concern with weight, can we make peace (even friends) with the scale? I think we can, especially if we don’t imbue it with the power to dictate our mood or our self-esteem. In other words, like so many major life issues, using the scale is a balancing act.

I don’t know about you, but my weight is inconsistent. I maintained a low weight for five years after my last big dieting extravaganza, but my weight has crept up. And I can’t muster the motivation to diet again—I just cannot bear the deprivation. Not only that, but Karen and I have recognized how stressful dieting is. I may never diet again. And because I am a full 40 pounds lower than my top weight, I’m still claiming the “maintenance” moniker.

I feel great. My clothes fit, I have good energy, and I’m getting lots of physical activity. My tendency is to just love and embrace myself as I am, although I admit that it does take some positive self-talk to keep up the good feelings. In this society, we are all encouraged to be “starved to perfection” as our sister Judith quips.

Watching the Academy Awards show this past Sunday, I couldn’t help but notice Mindy Kaling’s weight loss. I always thought she was quite adorable but now she is Hollywood svelte. I guess everyone in the entertainment world is taking Ozempic now. I’ll leave my share of diet drugs for those who really do suffer from diabetes. I’d rather learn to love myself through thick and thin.

I’m now six weeks out from my knee replacement surgery and I’m doing well. I’m walking two miles plus several days each week, getting strength training, and eating well (even though added desserts are somehow weaseling their way into my diet each day). Sleep is the only problem area and I am gradually getting more rest with the help of medications. Life is good.

Surgery is one of those events that hyper-focuses your attention. Like death or divorce, surgery brings your full attention to one point on the space-time continuum and holds it there. This may be a helpful survival mechanism for a few weeks while you get your bearings. But it’s important to know when to let that hyper-focus go, to scan the whole environment again, making sense of the big picture.

I can say for certain that I put my life on hold during the weeks after surgery. Just this week I have started considering a plan to lose the 20 pounds that came, unbidden, in the past two years. And I have not even committed to going on a diet, something that sounds really unappealing to me right now. Golly, I hate to say it, but I feel really good. I could be happy in this body for a while. Blasphemy?