How did you stop Yoyo'ing?

EricMurano

Hi Guys,

I've successfully used MFP to lose weight before and I've given other people advice on how to do the same thing in the past but now I feel like I'm in a slump that I can't get out of.

I feel like I can't break out of this binge/over eating obsession that I have right now. I give up on calorie counting before noon every day and I secretly eat. I am getting back into my running and weight lifting routine, though, but I am definitely out-eating the calories burned.

Has anyone else been in this situation where you've successfully lost weight before yet can't seem to get back into it? I feel like this is really just a mental problem and that I need someone to slap me across the head and tell me to snap out of it!

Soopatt

I think about this often. There are a ton of people on this site that are clearly very good at losing weight, but whether they are equally good at keeping it off is more difficult to answer and the success threads provide no evidence one way or the other.

I have seen a handful of people who have been able to maintain their goal weight for six years or more and those are the ones who are truly able to say "I have mastered this" (in the moment, ten years from now?). For the rest of us, if you have lost 100 pounds or 20 pounds, if you can't keep it off, you are still struggling - you still have a *weight problem*. I have lost a small amount of weight several times and I maintained my weight for a decade, until recently. I now think there is no arrival point. We will be fighting this for life, if we don't we will be back to point A in no time.

I couldn't say the reasons you are sabotaging yourself, only you can answer that, but you do sound pretty angry with yourself. Maybe you need to start by forgiving yourself for things not done and things eaten and just get back on the bike. Beating yourself up does not help.

WBB55

What are you feeding with your binges?

A particular taste craving? Loneliness? Frustration? Is food your coping mechanism for stress?

If I crave salt, I don't NEED an entire bag of potato chips to satisfy it. If I'm lonely, a pint of rocky road isn't going to solve anything long term. I don't mean to be new age here, but a habit of self awareness (and eventually mindfulness/meditation) has helped me identify the actual individual issue I was feeding with my binges.

I still slip now and then. But that's like once a month now instead of once a day.

csf2024

I struggle with this too.. I plateau at a certain weight .. workout 5-7 days a week eat healthy but over eat and it throws me off I tend to eat at night when I am bored

themedalist

Ultimately, it comes down to your decisions and choices. Overeating is going to derail your weight loss plans.

My friends have been reading, When You Eat at the Refrigerator, Pull Up a Chair by Geneen Roth and have given it rave reviews for her common sense approach to addressing binge eating and emotional eating.

When I started using MFP 4 years ago, I decided I was done with yo-yo dieting. I decided to spend as much time and effort in crafting a maintenance plan as I did my plan to lose weight. That's been the game changer for me....having a maintenance plan.

Here's my plan if you're interested:

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/themedalist/view/what-s-your-maintenance-plan-624676

Best Wishes!

Patttience

Its a good question and I am sure that there are many people like you out there. I am one of those.

However, I am getting better. I started on my "recent" weightloss journey at hte beginning of 2014 with a goal of losing it all by end of year. I got about one pound away from goal. Anyway its 1.5 years later and although i am now about 14 pounds above the goal weight, I am still way below my original starting point. My first year was mostly a steady decline or weight stable. REAching goal is always a danger time for just about everyone. Maintenance is hard. Its hard to maintain a low weight and its hard to maintain a stable weight when we are prone to binging.

I used to binge mainly on sweets. at the beginning of 2014 is started my quit sweets program. I came up with a strategy that i thought would work for me and continued to refine it as I went along but the basic now sweets strategy is still in place. Recently i went on a bike tour of japan and according to 'my rules' i ate sweets whilst there. ON coming home, i quit again.

The thing is my program was about creating new habits to replace the old bad ones. So I seem to have done that successfully. But from time to time, i still have bingy moments and periods. When i binge now, i do it with foods like peanut butter and other less addictive foods.

Anyway, why do we have these bingy periods and why is it so hard to recover from them and get back on track. I believe a lot of it is related to our moods and our hormones. You can't completely control you moods and down periods. But you can learn to manage them better so that the down periods are shorter and less frequent .

If you are able to retrain your baseline eating habits (to a really good eating style) then you can settle your eating down better once you have resolved the emotional crisis that set you on the path to binging. You may need help with that if you've never done it before.

Basically you need to solve or work on solving whatever the problem that brings you down is. You need ot find a way to lift your mood fundamentally. A short term pick up probably won't work. You need to resolve the problem so that you mood comes up and stays up.

The type of diet I think we all need to be eating is highly nutritious. I shouldn't have to explain it and i'm not going to but i do notice that a great many people on these diet sites don't seem to know or aren't willing to go far enough with the healthy food. Fundamentally i'm talking fruit and vegetables. And not processed stuff. My appetite settles down when i start eating more fruit and vegies. The foods are more filling. And the nutrition helps get your body working optimally. Binging on bad foods gets everything out of whack.

Bingers have to abandon the foods they love to binge on habitually. That's why I've abandonned sweets. I only ever eat them now in low risk situations - ie when someone else outside my home offers them to me. Travelling is low risk

Patttience

Oh sorry, i didn't mean to post that yet. i haven't edited.