Wow, you are amazing w/ your weight loss!
Aw, thanks.

Really, though, I'm good at losing weight - it's the keeping it off I'm not great at. Better luck this time, I hope.
I've hit a mental plateau. On the drive to work this morning, I found myself thinking "Maybe I've stopped losing because..." - at which point I caught myself, because I *haven't* stopped losing. I'm down 4.7 pounds in the last 22 days (going by trend), which is nearly 1.5 pounds a week, or right at 1% per week. It's also half a pound more loss than I anticipated having by this point - and I reset my goals on January 1. That's pretty darn good, and yet I've spent the last 3 weeks feeling like I'm not losing at all.
At the same time, I just recently keep finding myself running out of calories and still hungry, despite having bumped my calories up 100 or so a day. I've been happy in the range I started at back in late September up to this point, and all of a sudden it isn't enough, even though I weigh 30 pounds less. I'm guessing a combination of cold (January started out in the 70s, and is now in the 20s and 30s - I do at least 2 miles outside every day, and my office is poorly-heated enough that I work with my coat on), mental effort / stress (whee, tax season), and increased physical activity (I just calculated it out, and I'm walking an average of 8,000 steps a day *more* than I did before - which is about 4 miles).
I'd originally planned to just maintain during tax season, because it always makes me hungrier (and I don't normally gain, so those calories are getting used up). But I'm so close to being done that I just want to be done. Stick it out to the end, in part for fear that if I stop now, I won't find the impetus to pick it up again.
I are in need of a plan. Floundering for lack of a plan. "Eat more food" is too vague and nonspecific to be a plan. Heck, I'm having trouble with "eat 100 calories more food" - I need to know when to be eating them. Ah, that one is easy - immediately before I leave work for home, no matter how many calories I've eaten up to that point. If I eat a substantial snack then, I'll have some veggies or lean meat (usually there's one or the other, at least) with dinner with everyone, and some fruit after dinner, and maybe another something small before bed.
Here's a plan. Know what lunch the next day will be. If lunch is something high-carb, low protein, have a lower-calorie, higher-protein breakfast. A sawdust and guar-gum tortilla with cheese and pork = 150 calories and 19g protein. If lunch is something high-protein (I see tomorrow is tilapia), have a higher-calorie breakfast with some fat for sticking power. Tortilla + peanut butter = 250 calories and 11g protein. I can always do that, because my calendar tells me what lunch will be.
Have lunch when I get hungry. By which I mean noonish, not "2pm because I was in the middle of a big project and didn't want to put it down, even as my blood sugar spiraled downward." Go for a walk, come in and have some water, back to work.
Have a smallish snack when I get hungry again. An ounce of almonds is a good snack, particularly since I keep a can of almonds on my desk. An orange or a pear is a good snack. Maybe 2:30 or 3, depending on lunch. If lunch is out (like today), it was probably substantial enough I don't need this snack.
Have a smoothie when I get hungry again, around 5:30. Cup of milk, handful of berries, tablespoon of flax, maybe some banana. 250 calories or so.
So I should be at 900 or 1,000 calories before I leave work, and I was thinking that didn't leave me enough room for evening snacks. And it doesn't if I leave work at 5pm and hungry - but it works fine if I leave work at 6:30pm with a mostly-full tummy.
I wonder if we have a spare hot-water pot stashed somewhere. I know we got a new one for MIL right before she came back from Taiwan, but she brought one back with her. A hot water pot in my office, along with a bottle of lemon juice (no refrigeration needed if I put it in the window) would make for a happier work day. Must go look for that.
I have a plan. All is now right with the world.
