As some of you may know, I've been doing some work with the 'At Goal and Maintaining + Transition to Maintenance' team recently. Although we're a relatively small team compared to the size of the SparkPeople community as a whole, our members are showing that long-term maintenance is possible--that we can overcome the horribly daunting statistics that say 95% of people who lose weight will regain it. What we've seen is that although there are myriad resources and support groups for people who are trying to lose weight, there are shockingly few for those who are trying to maintain their losses.

As someone who has been among the 95% many times in the past, I personally believe this is a real gap in the weight loss support community and something that needs to be addressed. How can we lead millions of people on a journey to better health with tons of support along the way, then tell them they're totally on their own and have to figure things out for themselves once they reach their goals? I think we have to collectively do and expect better than that and that's why I'm so proud of what I've seen and been able to be a part of on the 'At Goal and Maintaining + Transition to Maintenance' team.

The members and leaders of our team have been working to build a space that addresses the needs and unique difficulties of our maintainers with discussions on a broad range of topics and links to maintenance-oriented research and articles. Although our members use a variety of strategies to maintain their losses, we're finding that the support we receive from each other can be an invaluable tool in staying motivated and helping us get back on track when we slip.

We hope that other people on SparkPeople will find our team and use it as a resource to help them with the many changes that go along with transitioning to and living with maintenance. In an effort to make our team more visible and accessible to all people, we've been highlighting blogs written by our members that deal with some of the challenges associated with maintenance.

This week, we're focusing on a recent blog written by ONEKIDSMOM. Like many of us, ONEKIDSMOM has struggled with many ups and downs over the course of her life. She's maintained long term in the past only to relapse and regain. This time, she has maintained a 75-pound loss for just over two years, the point when the statistical odds of regain drop to 50%, and she is more than 100 pounds below her lifetime highest weight. She approaches maintenance 'one day at a time' and hopes to stick with her healthier habits for the rest of her life.

In this blog, she focuses on her identity as a maintainer, her fears, and how she works to overcome them and why ongoing support has been so vital to her success:

www.sparkpeople.com/mypa
ge_public_journal_individu
al.asp?blog_id=5017681

We encourage you to read this blog and if you agree that its message is useful, please 'like' it so that it can become more visible to other people here at SparkPeople. If you are interested in reading more blogs like this, please send me a message and I will add you to my contact list. We typically highlight a different maintainer's blog every one to two weeks. If you're at or near goal, or just want to plan ahead, please visit our team thread to get a glimpse of what we've been talking about recently and to see exactly what we have to offer:

www.sparkpeople.com/mysp
ark/groups_individual.asp?
gid=1111

Hope to see you all there!