Amber,

Congratulations on a spectacular weight loss!

My advice would be to very slowly up your calories and carbs the way you
have started doing, staying at the new level for two weeks at a time until
you find the level at which you stop losing.

After that, you can experiment raising carbs and calories to see how much
higher you can go before you start gaining.

Be aware that when your carbs get to some threshhold level, you'll suddenly
gain a couple pounds, which is water weight associated with glycogen
refilling. This is NOT fat gain and is pretty much a one time thing.

I prefer to maintain with that glycogen in my muscles as I feel better that
way. For me the cut off where I gain that water weight is around 50 grams.

My own maintenance level tops out around 60-70 grams of carbs and calories
about 1650, but I'm in my fifties with the slowed down metabolism
characteristic of middle-aged ladies. The book about successful long-term
dieters which I summarized on my web page
(http://www.geocities.com/jenny_the_bean/success.htm) reported that most of
these dieters lost at 1200 calories and maintained at 1800 with a regular
exercise program.

While it is easy to advise a very slow increase in carbs and calories, I've
found it is much tougher to do. The psychological impact of reaching goal
includes some hidden thinking along the lines of "Now I can finally eat
[insert all the stuff you've been denying yourself] now."

I found it helpful to schedule in some of the forbidden stuff once I reached
goal, but balancing it out so that I still hit my carb and calorie targets.
However, I don't have a history of binging. If you can get out of control
very easily with food, this might be a bad idea.

But the critical point that the successful dieters study illuminated for me
is that successful dieters explore what they, personally, can handle, and
craft their own plans rather than having their food plans be something
imposed from outside themselves (against which they ultimately rebel.)  If
you can work with yourself to find what maintenance is for you, you'll end
up joining the people who maintain for that very elusive five years.

Best of luck!!!!

-- Jenny  - Low Carbing for 4 years. At goal for weight. Type 2 diabetes,
hba1c 5.2.
Cut the carbs to respond to my  email address!

Low carb facts and figures, my weight-loss photos, tips, recipes,
strategies for dealing with diabetes and more at
http://www.geocities.com/jenny_the_bean/

Looking for help controlling your blood sugar?
Visit  http://www.alt-support-diabetes.org/Newly%20Diagnosed.htm