Quitting

Recently I read a post in a blog I'm following called A Weight-y Life and the lady was talking about not wanting to reach her goal.  It got me thinking about what would happen when I reach my goal.  I know it is still a ways off (though I am down 26 pounds!) but it still got me thinking.  Will I ever quit trying to lose weight?  I sure hope so!  At some point I know this journey will end, either at 194 or at 130 (ish) and then the REAL work will begin.  Then the maintenance will start.  I started thinking about maintenance and how important that is.  Without maintenance all this work will be worthless because then I will just balloon back up to what I use to be, or worse.  I did some looking around and I found this blog that has some good maintenance tips.  I found, over all, that most of the maintenance tips are pretty much the same as the weight loss tips.  My guess is that once you have reached your goal, if it is like mine and far off, you have trained yourself how to eat and how to live so you just continue to do that.  I also use the myfitnesspal website and you can set your goals on that site so it will be interesting to see how my calorie limit changes once I change my goal to no weight loss (but also no gain).  I KNOW that counting calories and exercise are the key to MY weight loss and I have no doubt they will also be the key to my eventual maintenance.  Whatever happens when I do reach my goal, and I WILL reach my goal, I know that I will NEVER see 260 lb. again and hopefully I will never see 200 lb again either (after I pass it on my way down that is)  :)