The Scary Thing Is...

...that the number of people who gain back large amounts of weight that was lost greatly outweigh the number of people who have been able to keep it off (something like 80% of weight losers regain in 2 years. Egad!)

From the get go, I've been doing my best to educate and re-program myself so that I can be one of those people in the successful maintenance category. I've made notes of what successful maintainers do themselves, and I keep up with as many healthy eating/living/maintaining blogs as I can. Awhile ago, I'd come to terms with the fact that counting calories is going to be a life-long thing for me. When alcoholics are in recovery, they are always in recovery, and I've had to align myself with the same sort of mindset. I am in recovery from excess input and deficient output, calorically speaking. (I want to point out here the importance of looking at my previous weight struggles in a manner of calories and not food. Calories were my problem.)
But I learned something new the other day.
Mr. Light and I have been watching the HBO series The Weight of the Nation, Thursday night being the night for part 2: Choices. For the most part, this episode was very affirming for us, but we learned that, where careful watch on calories is the most successful way to lose weight, the most successful way to keep it off is exercise. See, I wouldn't have guessed that. I would have guessed that calorie calculating would rein supreme for both aspects. Of course it is still important, but it appears that it is the exercise that keeps your metabolism burning at a steady rate...without some kind of jolt to your metabolism, it will eventually slow down and get comfortable, more or less...which is something I already knew, but had only been applying it to eating and weightloss.
Imagine my surprise when the very next morning, my fitness motivation was about 2BPM away from this:

Look at London's face...not even SHE was having it! But I still got something done, thanks to the lovely Cassie Ho!

I know that it happens. I know that some days we just don't feel it like other days. But something about having watched that show the night before, and the fact that knowing the odds are stacked against my maintenance is constantly on my brain, I spent the entire day feeling just. plain. scared. I mean, I didn't spend my day cowering in a corner, but it was there...in the back of my brain, sending me little reminders about once an hour. It certainly didn't help my mood or already stressed demeanor (...end of the school year duties, getting ready to move, looking for jobs when we're halfway around the world. STRESS.)

But you know what? I totally kicked today's workout's butt.
Major.
We ran on the river path for 40 minutes opposed to our usual 30, and I even ran at a faster pace than usual! It's fantastic how often I've been surprising myself lately. That makes me feel good. It makes me feel great to know that I didn't hate 37 of those minutes, and it makes me feel even better to know that, as of right now, I'm on a great path to proving those statistics wrong. I just have to keep focusing on that...on proving them wrong.
I'm in this for the long haul.

What is it that scares you guys about weight loss and/or maintaining? What keeps you focused?
Maintainers: Besides calorie counting and consistent exercise, do you have any other tips for me and my readers?

Leave your fears and tips in the comments...I love hearing from you guys!