Maintaining without counting - how?!

[MESSING2]

Depressingly, I realise that I've never been a steady(ish) weight for any of my adult life - either been gaining or losing weight at any given time.

Now I am at target weight, I know I need 1800 calories to maintain and can do so if I count/measure everything meticulously but how on earth do you stick to it without doing so? How do people do it?! I can't face counting/measuring everything for the rest of my life.

Well done for getting to your target OP!

You've successfully stayed in a deficit for some time, the skill of maintenance is adding a bit back in without overshooting and ending up gaining weight again. You don't need to weight everything, and you can weight some food without logging. At maintenance I would weight cereal/pasta etc or I would weight family pasta and know that my portion was about 1/5, which I would eyeball when I serve it for example. I wouldn't weight much else.

I might increase my portion size of oats/rice slightly but not much, and I would add in a treat here or there BUT I work on the basis that I can have ANY of it but not ALL of it if that makes sense? So I might have a chocolate biscuit or two with my cup of tea but then wouldn't have ice cream after dinner. And if I reach for a biscuit or whatever then I ask myself if I really want it. If I do, then I have it. If I am not that fussed then I might not.

Then you monitor over time and tweak your daily habits as needed. In reality your weight fluctuates for a range of reasons so your maintenance weight is a range. You can monitor your body weight over the weeks and months and if you see you are generally at or close to the top of your range then you trim slightly.

It's a scary transition when you've been meticulously weighing and logging everything, you have to let go gradually and learn to eyeball some food while still keeping control of the higher calorie stuff.

Hope that helps.

@everycowandagainthat is amazingly helpful, thank you. Yes, it's a really daunting transition when you've been used to measuring everything.