Yesterday, as I walked back to the office with my lunch, I was thinking about maintenance.

I got a turkey burger, broccoli and brown rice for lunch. Sure, I “can eat whatever I want.” Eat whatever I want if I don’t care about maintaining my hard work.

Generally, people who have lost weight say it’s harder to maintain than it is to actually lose weight, but I was thinking about my weight loss process:

Giving up nights out with friends in favor of workouts.

Being really strict with what I ate.

Creating brand new habits.

Struggling through tough, fat-burning workouts.

The hard work has already been done, and the habits have been created. And I don’t ever want to have to do that again. It is so much easier to just keep at it, then to start all over again.

It’s why I keep running.

And keep ordering vegetables. (Most of the time.)

And keep strength training.  Um, working on that.

I know myself, and I know that one chicken parm sandwich and fries (that is what I would order right now if it had no calories and didn’t make me feel gross) leads to a chicken pad see yew leads to some other form of carb and cheesy goodness.

I obviously indulge sometimes (I mean, you read this blog. You know my penchant for french fries and beer) but I rein myself in before things get out of control, because I never want to have to start all over again. I know the feeling of letting myself go too far, and I never want to feel that again.

This post is sort of serious, so here’s a photo of a puppy. He’s in NJ right now because I think a sea of boxes would be really overwhelming to him. Yes, we did FaceTime the other night.