I've reached my goal weight. Now what?

 Disclaimer: at time of writing, I'm quite far away from my goal weight, but it doesn't really matter to me. The same way I lost 10 kilos, I'll lose any amount.

I had a brief relaxing period between my two Insanity challenges, with the express purpose of testing how I'll be able to maintain my weight (and, well, I was foreseeing that my body would be totally exhausted after the first one, so I wanted to give myself a bit of time to recover, to get over soreness or any other pain), and I did fucking great. On the day of my first weigh in, I weighed the same as on the day of my last fit test, so that's amazing. It gives me a bit of hope for when I'll be 60 kilos, and will want to maintain that.

Now, I won't want to be counting calories even then. I want to continue this lifestyle of "I eat whatever I want and I train because it makes me feel good", but I'm not sure how I'll be doing that.

So I did what everyone would do, which is: a google search. And that led me to plenty of useless articles that keep telling me "not to throw the scale out", or to keep setting goals, or whatever else we might imagine, but that is not what I was looking for. What I want is personal accounts of people, of their difficulties and such, plans and mistakes, so I can prepare really well.

Now, one useful thing I found was the recommendation to schedule a health exam. I'm not entirely sure what that will mean, but we'll get there when we get there.

I'll be at that weight in about a year, though, and I'd like to know what I'll be dealing with. I'll be doing strength training, for many reasons, but one of them being the higher metabolism it gives people. The other is having an amazing ass, if I want to be really blunt.

So I'm just gonna look at people's plans? Instagram posts, perhaps?

I will be needing to sleep just as much and as well as I do now, or maybe even more - this one just because I really love sleep.

I will need to keep up the training that got me to this point, which would mean working out 7 or more times a week. I will need time for that, and I'll need to find workouts I'm actually willing to do. I'll be running at least 4 times a week, improving my speed and my endurance (this one should be okay, though, as I'll be able to run a 10K by September, or even earlier).

I definitely need to find a method to make my workouts not boring. I'm not sure what that will mean - should I listen to podcasts? The music isn't always doing it for me, but it does more than video essays. This specifically relates to running, because that one is always too easy for me to just give up on, especially if I'm in a bad mood. It's something like Insanity, I'd like some music and someone to talk to me, so maybe I should make my own remixes? I'll try out that one running thing I found on spotify, but I'll need to pay to be able to listen to it properly. It's five euros for three months, I've paid more for netflix. (update: you can use the NRC guided runs! Idk for different workouts tho)

I will also be doing strength training, starting at 3 times a week. I definitely want to learn to bench press. And I'm gonna do so many lower body exercises that everyone will wonder at me. Oh, and I also want to do pullups. Even if I get to do pullups before I'm at 60, I'll download some app for that, because I recall having an app that said it would get me from 0 pullups to 20.

How will this relate to eating, though? I really want to keep the whatever, whenever lifestyle that I'm currently enjoying, and I'm not sure if I'm "crowding out" the unhealthy foods that I used to eat, or just starting to like the healthy things more, but I'm assuming this tendency will continue, so I'll crave salads more often than pizzas. I'm going to start a food diary, to just write down everything I eat, and whether I like it. Then I'm gonna make the recipes that I like. (actually, now my body and mind really settled into the 93 kilos and I might need to do some more soul searching to get through this block - I'm back to craving less healthy foods)

I'm going to phase out weigh-in days. For the first month, I am going to keep weighing myself daily, and counting the weekly averages. Then, in the second month, I'll weigh myself six times a week, and so on, until I'm down to one or two times a week. I'll have to pay attention to how much I ate on the day before, when the weigh-ins get rare; and I'll have to pay attention to still eat normally on any days, despite knowing that the next day will be a weigh-in. 

I'm going to measure different parts of my body twice in the first month, then once a month for the next six months, and finally, once every two months after that.

Oh, and I forgot to mention: I'm not aiming to keep myself strictly at 60 kilograms all the time, I'm aiming for the range of 58-63. If I get over 63, it won't be a problem, because in four weeks, I can very easily get back into the desired range. And if I get under 58, it will be very easy to solve, because I'll just eat an extra banana every day.

I'll start each day off with a Hot Girl Walk. In fact, I'll implement this starting tomorrow. I'm going to simply walk to the gym, thinking positive stuff about myself, and so on.

I'll also meditate for at least ten minutes. I'm going to start implementing this slowly, ten minutes once a week, then twice, and so on, starting this week.

It's really important to already have built some habits, because keeping them up will be much easier than building them when I get to that weight.

So, to sum up:

• Very slowly phase out weighing in. (get to once a week)
  
• Take measurements, but rarely (slowly phase out)
  
• Do a general health check (and then, any follow-ups resulting from it)
• Keep tracking my mood
• Get 9 to 10 hours of sleep
• Run (or some type of cardio) 4 times a week
• Strength train 3 times a week
• Adjust training as comfortable
• Keep a food diary
• Walk 20-30 minutes every morning, thinking positive thoughts AKA Hot Girl Walk
• Meditate 10 minutes each day
• Adjust food intake if weight is getting out of designated interval.
• JOURNALING

I just realized I should add journaling to this. It will be basically in the same notebook as my food diary: one page will be all the food I eat and water I drink in a day, and on the next page, I'll write down my feelings and experiences. I'm not sure whether structured or unstructured journaling would be better, so I'll do both.

I already have a few questions for the structured part, and the unstructured part should be easy. I'll do this every evening, right after work (or right before bed). I'll take my time phasing this in, gonna start at one entry a week.

I'm going to write a follow-up to this one when I reach my goal weight, and after the first month of maintenance; then, as it seems necessary.