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Hey everyone, Mikki here. You're listening to Mini Mikkipedia on a Monday and today I want to talk about maintenance. And I know that it should feel like when you reach this sort of utopia of weight maintenance, the diet is done. Now you don't have to worry about being in a deficit. Things should really just be like all unicorns and rainbows. But actually, most often people get a little bit stuck.

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And I want to chat today about why maintenance is possibly the hardest part of body composition and maintaining a healthy body composition. Of course, you think that the hardest part of body transformation would be the absolute start. You know, the hunger that you feel in the first few weeks, the habits that you're trying to embed and change and disestablishing old habits, just the change. But for many people, especially the ones who actually make it to their goal,

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the hardest part is always what comes next. And that's maintenance. That's the place where you're no longer chasing a lower number, no longer getting daily high fives from the scale, no longer earning praise from your mates at the gym or from your aunt on Facebook. You've sort of arrived, but now what? So today, that's what I wanna chat about. Why maintenance can feel so much harder than fat loss, even though you're technically doing less.

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And I want to frame this through a concept that completely changed how I thought about the process, or at least was part of it. And that's Seth Godin's idea of the dip. The dip is that uncomfortable middle place in any meaningful pursuit. The novelty has worn off, the rewards have slowed, you're working, but it feels like you're getting nothing back. Then you start to wonder whether it's all worth it. In fat loss, the dip might hit when the scale plateaus, but in maintenance, the dip is like the whole phase.

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It is from here until the day you die, or almost. There's no countdown. There's no before and after. There's just the work, because that's the thing with maintenance. It isn't like the work is done. It's almost like this is the real work begins. So you need to do the work and you need the willingness to just keep doing it without the sort of external feedback that you may have gotten when you were in your diet phase.

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Maintenance is where your new identity either becomes real or it fades back into old patterns. So I want to chat about some of the psychological traps that make maintenance feel harder than fat loss, why motivation often drops off here and what to do about it and how you can move through the dip without quitting on yourself. Because essentially when you do sort of throw in the towel, so to speak, the only person that is negatively impacted by that

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is you, ultimately. So the dip, essentially, as I said, this is that sort of middle of any worthwhile pursuit. And that's something that Seth Godin uses when he discusses changes in what motivates people. So the start of something is super exciting. The end of something is rewarding. And the in-between is the hard part. And, you know, when you're running a marathon, I often like to think about those kilometers 23 to 27.

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as being no man's land. Like you're too far gone to turn around and go back, but it's still so far away from the end. And I guess this is one way to think about the dip because in the reality, the reality is there is no real end to maintaining your weight unless you decide of course to embark on a phase of building muscle and you can sort of shift a goal into something else. But in maintenance, the dip is that it's like a psychological stall. So there are no measurable changes

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but yet the effort still feels high. And the reason for this is because most people haven't really learned how to eat at maintenance. Most people are either on a diet with specific targets related to either fat loss per week or calories per week and numbers of workouts, number of workouts, or they're completely off a diet. And so they've made a conscious decision not to think about food and in fact to almost rebel against any tendencies that might

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be even considered dieting. And so many people go through these different phases. We're like, oh, well, I'm not on a diet, so it doesn't matter what I eat or I'm having extra chocolate and things like that. When you're in maintenance, you do still have to think about it, and that's what makes it hard. But what makes it harder is that there aren't these external rewards at the end of the week. Because often we don't think about maintaining the staying status quo as being successful. And so it's a change in that mindset, I think, around recognizing that

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every week that you maintain your weight within 0.5 % of what it was, that's actually success. If you're still using the scales as a marker of success. And I'll talk about that in a little while. And I guess the thing to sort of round that out is that what throws people is we expect effort to equal visible reward. And that doesn't happen when you're maintaining your weight. So there are the few reasons, and I'll just list them as to why maintenance feels harder than fat loss and looks

05:28
They're very similar, but some of them may resonate more than you with others, as I find when I listen to information. So the first one is there's no feedback loop. Success equals nothing changing. And so it can feel like spinning your wheels. So like I say, you're not checking off this sort of calorie deficit. You're not seeing losses on the scales or changes in your clothes or anything like that. There can also be a loss of goal identity. So you're not on diet. Who are you now? And

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You know, when you are, particularly if you're in a community-based setting with your diet, like you might be, you know, doing one of my plans, Mondays Matter, which by the way, I've got something coming for you in June anyway, more on that later, or Amway or Weight Watchers, know, any kind of meetings where you're, you've got this common ground with people and you've got this sort of identity of you were in this phase of losing weight and a lot of what you can do sort of wraps itself around it.

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So that can be really challenging for some people. The third reason is that there's not as much external validation. When you see visible changes in someone's physique, like it or not, a lot of people are going to comment. And for some people, that is a real sense of this validating effect that they're doing something right or they're pleasing people or they're getting that really lovely feeling of a compliment. And that doesn't happen if you've just sort of stayed the same. Like you've shifted

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potentially you've transformed into this other sort of smaller version of yourself and hopefully healthier version of yourself, stronger and leaner and confident, but then you just become who you are. So the shift and change is what people notice and comment on, but then they will just normalize how you are now. So you're not going to get that external validation. There definitely is uncertainty in eating. So adding food back can feel a little bit threatening and it's not this magical food freedom that people think.

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So this is one of the reasons why I am a fan of the diet after the diet. Why I like to practice maintenance when we do a Monday's matter plan. I have a small coaching group now where I encourage them to eat at these maintenance calories. So they practice eating a little bit more and they can see that it's not going to just derail everything. They're not gonna gain that 10 kilos overnight. But when you've been successful in that deficit model, it can be really challenging for some people to embrace the idea of eating more

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and know that it's not going to make them spiral back to where they were. So there can be some real challenges around that. So additional coaching beyond just the diet, I think is so important. And that sort of is obviously linked into this fifth reason why maintenance feels harder is that there is this fear of backsliding. So you are at once both scared to relax, but you're also a bit exhausted from the control you feel you have to exert.

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So that can be a real challenge for some people. And then number six, biology pushes against you. When you have reached this point of weight maintenance and you're happy with where you're at, you need to give your body an opportunity to catch up. And often the lowest weight that you see on the scales isn't actually your maintenance weight. It can be one to two kilos or even more higher, which I know is a bit of a challenge mentally for some people, but...

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Whenever you shift from a deficit to maintenance calories and you start to increase the amount of food going in, you increase carbohydrate, that's often one of the first things to go up, which will allow you to feel more energized as well. But you also store more carbohydrate in your muscles as glycogen, you store more water. These things, plus more food in your gut, will naturally increase the scales. Your muscles will fill out because they're not so flat because you don't have that muscle glycogen.

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So that from a head perspective is a real challenge for some people, particularly if you've been sort of gearing towards this goal for however many months. And so I do feel that it's necessary for us to know this going into the fat loss process, that the lowest number that you see on the scale isn't your maintenance number. But actually, in addition to that, when you do lose weight, your brain does send signals to try to get you to eat more. So

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For every kilogram you lose on the scales, people can feel hungrier for around 100 extra calories. So when you reach this point where you may have lost like five or six kilos, say, but your brain might be hungry for an extra five or 600 calories. Now, to be honest, I don't know that there's this linear relationship there, but I do know that models of looking at appetite signaling and weight loss have found that direct link between the brain signals and

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your hunger hormones and the amount of food that people eat. So there is a real relationship there. Hunger hormones absolutely increase, obviously tied to what I was just describing. So ghrelin goes up, but your appetite hormones may also drop. Leptin drops, which is the appetite hormone that helps us feel satisfied. That will drop in fat loss anyway. GLP-1 can also go down, and that's another hormone that helps allow us to feel

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more satisfied. So there are many reasons for why we experience this. When people feel the dip occurring, if you like, or when they fall into the dip, typically what happens is that when you get into maintenance, you reach this level of fatigue and you stop tracking entirely. And so what can happen is that things start to get a little bit loose. And whilst you think you know what you're eating, oftentimes people continue to, if they're not,

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on task, they will under eat protein and then they can potentially overeat fat or they just under eat because they fearful of gaining weight. And I see that quite a bit. The other thing that can happen is that they track obsessively. And I don't think tracking is a bad thing at all. And some people can track for years and years and years, no problem at all, but others do need a break and they don't allow themselves some of that sort of flexibility that can now come in because you're in maintenance or

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they start to look for the next thing in the diet space. So they'll either be chasing new diet programs or they'll be looking for the next magic bullet when it comes to body composition without consolidating progress. And I don't think it's necessarily again, a bad thing if you're looking for another goal, but it's questionable whether it is in fact a body composition goal that you should look for or is it something else that you need to do

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that allows you to sort of pull yourself out of this panic or dip that can occur when it comes to maintaining your weight. The thing with maintenance is it is a skill. It isn't a break from all of the habits and behaviors that you've built up over your diet phase. And in fact, the same skills apply regardless, the numbers are different. That is the only difference. Whether you are maintaining your weight or you're dieting, literally,

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it's a difference of say 20 % of your calories and the same protein centric, the same satiety related foods, the same sort of prep and planning behaviors should all be in place. But again, the numbers are different. So here are some strategies. The first one is set some new metrics. So yes, you've reached your fat loss goal. What else can you

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focus on that gives you that same opportunity to see results and to experience those rewards. So can you set strength goals? Can you set speed goals or endurance goals or something related to athleticism that allows you to shift from just thinking about fat loss and thinking more in that sort of athlete mindset? Or what about being consistent? Can you use some sort of consistency streaks like that you hit fiber seven days of the week or

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You've got a water goal and you're able to maintain that. Or you have, you know, five alcohol-free nights a week, something like that that you have that you can feel proud of each week that isn't related to a shift in the scale. What about your sleep? Is there anything you need or could you work on there? Digestion is another one. So new metrics that aren't involving the scale can help shift your focus and keep you motivated. But also do think about your anchor identity.

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If your identity was someone who needed to lose weight and now you don't, can we shift that to an identity of someone who wants to fuel themselves to be as strong, lean and confident as possible? Can you focus your eating behaviors around that identity rather than someone who's just trying to maintain their weight? It's a little bit sort of a scarcity mindset. So how can you think about your food in a way that helps fuel you rather than just related to your aesthetic?

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Can you embrace habit over hustle? So this is the thing. And now that you've got these habits and behaviors you know really helped you to get to your goal, we need to just keep repeating them. We can't really continue to reinvent the wheel. And it literally is just embedding those habits that will allow you to be consistent over time in the long-term. It'll allow you to worry less about tracking, have less of a scarcity sort of mindset.

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Not everything in life has to be exciting. So can you plan for things to be boring? Structure, routine, meal prep, these all matter. These are the things which help ground you and help you be successful. So we should really value that the same way we value brushing our teeth or sleeping seven hours a night. And then the fifth tip, I didn't really count them down, this is my fifth point, practice flexibility and not abandonment. So can you, for example,

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continue to track but maybe you track three days a week as opposed to seven. Maybe you continue to track but you allow yourself a day off tracking or a meal off tracking. Things like this allow you to see that the catastrophe in your mind of letting go of some of the really rigid things isn't actually catastrophe at all. And so it does allow you more flexibility and more freedom but I do think some people do do better with some of this rules and structure as I've sort of mentioned. And

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Success now is about stability. And if you think about it, this should be our end goal because prior to the fat loss phase where success was losing weight, we were constantly in this flux of fear of weight gain and sort of rebounding between weight gain and weight loss. If stability is success, then we should celebrate every week that we are able to attain it. But of course, all of this is mindset.

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but just know that feeling the sort of dip in maintenance and like it's a real grind doesn't mean that you're failed. It just means in fact, you're right where you need to be, particularly if everything is staying the same. So really the dip ends when your habits become part of who you are and maintenance really is the bridge between the short-term discipline and long-term change or lifelong change. When you sort of wake up and think, well, this is just who I am now,

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That really is such a win. And when you feel like throwing in the towel, just ask yourself, what would it look like just to keep going? Can I do this for just one more week? I'm curious to know whether this is anything you've experienced. I'm getting it a little bit in some of the groups that I'm in and it's super common. it really is with everything with nutrition. When you've got the numbers dialed in as to what it takes to maintain your weight, it really does come down to mindset.

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and shifting the goalposts a little bit in terms of your expectations, in terms of maybe how you feel about it. But always celebrate the fact that you're maintaining your weight. I think that is such a big win, but it doesn't have to be a grind. So if you've got questions, absolutely reach out. I will tell you though, that, bit of a shift in gear really, I have a Mondays Matter Accelerator program coming late June. So if you've ever wondered what it's like to do a program like that with me, this is a 21 day,

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very low barrier to entry, gives you a bit of a taste of what a full program can be and absolutely will give you those quick wins which I know people love. Which of course is why it makes maintenance that much harder because you just don't really get those quick wins, particularly if you've been focused on the scale. Anyway, I will pop a link in the show notes to Monday's Matter Accelerator. You can chat to me about that or anything over on Instagram threads and X @mikkiwilliden, over on Facebook @mikkiwillidenNutrition.

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or head to my website, mikkiwilliden.com. All right, team, have the best week.