The closer you get to your goal weight, the more difficult it will be because:

1) You have less non-functional weight to lose
2) Your body is designed, by nature, to preserve fat and fight losing weight as a means of survival

Both of you sound like you have made great strides and are getting much closer to where you'd like to end up physically. Being this close, I absolutely recommend an occasional diet break like LCLBH did. I can go on about this for a WHILE, so I'll try to be brief.

The body has various set points for weight, muscularity, and hormones that it deems as a state of homeostasis...a sort of default memory setting for the body. (Tangentially, this is a big reason why crash dieters can gain weight back so quickly - the body remembers where it "wants" to be.) So the goal isn't just to lose fat, but also adjust the body's various set points as you go so that you are naturally less inclined to gain that weight back.

If you have been losing fat for awhile, it makes sense to take a diet break to give your body a chance to rest and reset. If done correctly (meaning a proper calorie deficit diet followed by a short period of calorie maintenance), it will actually speed up the journey to the end goal. This is hard to accept mentally for some people because on its surface it seems counterintuitive to NOT be under-eating, but the human body is an amazing organism that has developed extremely advanced survival techniques that kick into gear autonomically. The body cares little about what you've decided your goals are mentally and adjusts various hormones to make you eat more, make the preservation of fat favorable, etc.

Diet breaks can be slippery slopes, so treat your break as part of your overall plan and stick to it. Most people have better success with accountability, so if you don't have a friend to help keep you accountable (and you can help them in return), you can still hold yourself accountable by tracking what you eat on websites such as FitDay. Accountability works, and I recommend it, but it can become too much for some, so in the end you have to find what works for you.

If anyone has any questions on this, let me know. Again, congrats to both of you on your success!

-PM

M:12y - BD:12/11 - D:6/13 - 4Ds

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." -MLK Jr.