Nobody prepared me for maintenance being an identity question

There is a particular kind of quiet grief in maintenance that took me a long time to name. Something that had been the centre of my attention simply stopped needing it.

Two years in and the only thing I actively do now is a note in my phone once a week and a review once a year. Everything else has become automatic.

Maintenance is where the non-scale things came into their own for me. All the things I noticed in year one turned out to be the things that stayed.

I reduced, held, and then reduced again eight months later, both times slowly and both times after a proper conversation. Neither move was dramatic and both were fine.

Something that helped: I decided to keep journalling weekly in maintenance even when there was nothing to say. Those entries are how I noticed a slow change I would otherwise have missed.

My honest account of maintenance is that it took about four months to stop bracing. I kept waiting for something to go wrong and nothing did, and eventually I put the brace down.

What I did not expect was how much of maintenance is about other people forgetting. The interest fades and you are left doing the same thing quietly, which is fine, and is also lonely sometimes.

Nothing useful, just that I have been exactly here.

I would say to anybody approaching this stage: decide what you want your ordinary week to look like, because nothing is going to arrange it for you once the novelty ends.