How'd you gain it back?

cwolfman13

lindsmayf wrote: »

I've been focusing on my health for three months now - and I've lost about 15 pounds! But I'm worried about slacking off and gaining it back... My self-discipline is not exactly stellar.

For those of you who have lost the weight, then later gained it back: What was your trigger? Was it a situation in your life, the time commitment, or just losing motivation?

I haven't gained it back, but in my experience, people gain it back because they fail to actually adopt this new lifestyle that they talk so much about. By lifestyle, I'm not talking about logging or keeping a diary either...I'm talking about ditching the SAD and moving on. Healthful eating and regular exercise and activity in general.

I've been maintaining right on about 2 years and I don't log. I eat very healthfully for the most part. My diet consists largely of whole food nutrition and meals prepared from scratch, whole ingredients. It's easy to eat a bag of potato chips and down a couple thousand calories in a sitting...I challenge you to do that with an actual potato. Fruit and veg are front and center in my diet with roughly 6 servings per day and a serving or two of fruit per day. Most of my protein is lean sourced...I eat a lot of eggs, fish and chicken and lean cuts of pork and beef...fattier cuts are a nice treat on a special occasion. Legumes, lentils, oats, and brown rice are staples of my diet and I get most of my fats from things like avocado, olives, olive oil, coconut oil, avocado oil. nuts, etc.

In addition to nutrition I exercise regularly...exercise is just as important, if not moreso in maintenance. This is why the exercise regimen you adopt while losing weight should be sustainable...too many people go nut trying to lose weight and they burn out. People also associate exercise with weight loss rather than fitness...so they lose the weight and they stop exercising...because after all, they're not trying to lose anymore right? Big mistake and very common.

I and my family are also just pretty active in general. We like to be out and about doing things when we can. My wife and are stuck behind desks most of the day, but we like to spend evenings walking the dog and weekends taking the kids hiking or doing family bike rides or long afternoons walking around the zoo, etc. We don't spend too much time just lounging around, watching t.v. or whatever...we like being out and about when we can be.

All of these things are habits that have been cultivated over the last 2 years and 9 months or so....they didn't come overnight...lots of baby steps and mini goals and the realization that I'm never really "done"...there is always something to improve on.

lthames0810

Depression

It led to poor sleep (still a problem) and sugar craving. Binge eating started. Also, it caused me to not care about myself and so I didn't want to spend the effort to plan meals and log calories.

Got treatment. Much better now.

snowflakesav

I gained it back because I started eating out more. Especially vacations or family events like a funeral . I return home to ashamed to step on the scale. I feel resentful that the event didn't allowed me freedom to exercise or included lots of pub food ( which I hate) then the bad feelings of shame and resentfulness manifest in eating comfort food and the scale rockets.

Failure to plan, not having time to take care of myself and eating out are my triggers

I tend to do better if I have a plan in place after family events to diet...for instance I do alway go on an extreme diet before and after the Christmas holidays.

Queenmunchy

I lost weight as a kid and maintained that (give or take 5 lbs) until I got pregnant at 25 years old. I gained 80lbs (RIDICULOUS) and lost it all within one year. In the past 8 years, I've slowly gained 10lbs, lost 5, and now I have 5lbs to go - 15 if I want to get crazy small. I attribute the weight gain to post-divorce outings with friends. Social life was busy!

ab_1203

I lost weight at first, but then starting to comfort eat because pf situations that arose in life. The food was good and it was easy to say screw it, Ill lose it down the line. In the end I gained weight, didnt want to get any bigger and realised the eating wouldnt solve my problems, so here I am again. I dont have much to lose but its still a challenge. Really hope I dont fall into that trap again.

TeaBea

TimothyFish wrote: »

For me, there wasn't a "trigger." My problem is that I'll go to the store and see something that looks good, bring it home and rather than keeping the package around for a while, I'll eat the whole package on the day I bought it. Or I'll eat a sandwich and think, "that was good, I'll make another one." Or I'll see something in a vending machine and think, "that looks good, one time won't hurt me." A little bit of that is okay, as long as you make up for it by eating less later, but when you string several of those things together, week after week, you find yourself with all that weight that you lost before.

But for what it is worth, I kept the weight off for five years before I started gaining again.

This^

It wasn't a "trigger" for me either. It was just the small daily decisions. Skip an exercise day here, have an extra snack there. I hate to think I will be logging forever....but that may be the case for me.

harpsdesire

The moment I stop actively dieting I start gaining. It's always been that way for me-- I apparently don't have any good concept of maintenance....

The trigger for stopping dieting though? It's been things like: feeling depressed, being overly busy, becoming so bored with my healthy food rotation that I lose interest in eating for several days and end up binging eventually (CICO has hopefully solved that one at least!), family difficulties, injury/illness, moving, or special occasions like holidays or vacation.

atypicalsmith

I've gained and lost about 300 pounds over the past ten years. When my scales read 169.8 I was horrified and haven't looked back. Twenty four down, thirty six to go.

dirtyflirty30

I had lost 80 pounds. Then I plateaued for like, a year. It was frustrating. And then, the creep began. A slice of pizza here, a slice there - what did it matter since I wasn't getting to my goal anyway? And then... I got a boyfriend. Who really liked to eat. And I said, what the heck? Sure! Let's go out to eat all the time and eat all the things! And then my mom died. And then my then-fiance decided he didn't want to marry me after all. And then I ate all my feelings.

^^^ eff that. Lessons learned.

fattymcrunnerpants

I lost 80lbs, got pregnant, and continued to maintain a net of 70lb weight loss then got thyroid cancer. My thyroid was so screwed up I gained 60lbs in 3 months and gained another 30lbs after that... yeah. Things are evening out again and I'm slooooooooowwwwwwwwllllly losing it again.

girlviernes

A few years ago I lost about 45 lbs. It came off fairly easily and I became overly confident that I would continue to lose or at least maintain without too much effort. In addition, I started intensive work on my dissertation which focused on the Health at Every Size approach. The more literature review I read, I actually felt some guilt over dieting and being pretty restrictive in my food choices, and it also undermined my belief that I could keep the weight off long-term. So I was stressed with my dissertation and undermining the mental part, and just gradually put on some weight, and then I moved cities and underwent an intensive clinical year and towards the end of it when I was getting ready to defend my dissertation that's when I went back to pretty extreme binge eating and put on about 25 pounds in a few months.

My takeaways are a) don't get complacent, this is important and will take ongoing diligence. b) be mindful of the mental aspect and where I am putting my attention. In some ways I am glad for the experience, because I think it prepared me well for weight loss this time around. I am not restrictive, I am willing to put in the work, and I have finally been able to reconcile my values of size acceptance, the realities of how rare weight loss is maintained, with my desire to lose weight and be healthy.

madcat444

I think, know I'm a yo-yo dieter. I lose weight when I have goals in mind like vacations etc and then it's all bets are off and I throw myself completely off the wagon!

Getting back on is the hard part, usually takes me a while but I need to be in the correct mindset to do it. On it at the moment as off to Italy end of May and hoping to have flicked a very well hidden moderation switch by then. Going well so far but time will tell................

.................never ending saga for me!

Brentm77

"Getting back on is the hard part, usually takes me a while but I need to be in the correct mindset to do it. On it at the moment as off to Italy end of May and hoping to have flicked a very well hidden moderation switch by then. Going well so far but time will tell................"

One piece of unsolicited advice. What has worked well for me on vacations is to only eat dinner (and sometimes dessert). It allows me to have a fabulous dinner and treat every day - which feels like I am on vacation and not dieting or missing out on local cuisine. Even if I stick to that for half the vacation, I usually don't gain weight, or only gain a little weight, which I can get off within a week. If I stick to it, sometimes I lose weight. For me, food is a very enjoyable part of vacation, so I don't want to feel like I am missing out.

Sorry to hijack the thread. Sticking to the topic now- I have found that my past gain-backs mostly occur because of the delayed response between eating food and gaining. In other words, I go off plan for a day and don't see the scales move too much. Mentally, this makes me think I can eat semi-bad and not gain. But I think there is a average at work that takes several days (maybe weeks if modestly overeating) to show. Overeating soon becomes frequent. Then I say, "ok, no more. I have gained 5 pounds and that is it." But the new way of eating has now become habit, so it sticks with me. Now up 10 pounds, I think I have drawn a line again. But within a day or two I always think I will put off being super strict until next week. That becomes two weeks. Then three.

I usually do finally find the resolve to stop from gaining all the weight back (with one exception about a decade ago). I do think that it is better to lose and gain than to just keep gaining. I think being on average much lighter, with a few bumps in the road, is better despite all the stuff written about yo-yo dieting. Ecspecially given that my blood work and other health has been great on average.

PeachyPlum

It was a period in my life that shall forever be known as "The Winter of Grilled Cheese"

Lounmoun

I lost weight before doing a diet that was not sustainable. I stopped that and gained the weight back.
More importantly, I did not know how many calories I needed, how many calories I was consuming and did not exercise regularly. So I wasn't eating whole pans of brownies, large pizzas or gallons of ice cream but I was eating too much for my activity level.

britt01any

I had always maintained a 130 lb physique, (exception = 2 pregnancies). Being 5'7 that was adequate. I quit smoking in December 2013, since then I have peaked at 157lbs. I have been up and down since then.(My current weight is 147).I have been back on MFP trying to lose that extra 15-17 lbs. I am not sure but I think age and mindset have a lot to do with my fluctuating weight. I don't have a strong network of support through friends and family, but I do visit this site daily and read these threads , they have given me the motivation I had been lacking!! So, thanks to all that share your stories!!

blankiefinder

I stress ate my way through a lot of baking including 9x13 pans of fudge and brownies

omma_to_3

Over the last 2 years, I've gained back about 10 to 15 lbs. When I look at my progress charts, it abruptly changes when my best friend died, and continued through my father's battle with cancer than ended last week :-(

So, stress, very clearly. I've been tracking and working out that entire time, but life got in the way. The funeral is this week so I'm hoping to get back on track next week and lose the weight I've gained.

runningagainstmyself

I lost 85lb., then gained 35lb. between Christmas and a 6-wk trip to SE Asia. Took about 15 of it off, then stopped taking care of myself while I was writing the first draft of my thesis. I ate what I wanted and drank like a fish. Put on 30lb over 5 months. Ta-daaa! Yeah, not doing that again.

blankiefinder

omma_to_3 wrote: »

Over the last 2 years, I've gained back about 10 to 15 lbs. When I look at my progress charts, it abruptly changes when my best friend died, and continued through my father's battle with cancer than ended last week :-(

So, stress, very clearly. I've been tracking and working out that entire time, but life got in the way. The funeral is this week so I'm hoping to get back on track next week and lose the weight I've gained.

Good luck with your journey, omma! It was actually my dad's cancer diagnosis that put me back on this journey. I knew I couldn't keep handling stress the way I had been. With a predisposition to two separate kinds of cancer my doctor told me the best thing I could do to lower my risk is maintain a healthy weight. So I turned exercise instead of food. Honestly it was probably just as effective if not more.