I Have Noticed Many People Returning, Having Regained Their Weight ...
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JeromeBarry1 wrote: »I thank each and every one of you who return to MFP and state publicly that you are back for the second, third, or nth time to lose that weight again. I really do thank you. This is my first time using MFP, and I've lost 104 lb in 18 months. Part of it was too fast with too small of a net calories and part of it wasn't. Part of it was not eating exercise calories and part of it was eating more to exercise more. It's been a wild ride and each of you continually inspire me to stay, log, and keep a close watch on my energy balance. Again, thank you.
It's always great to see success stories! You seem to be doing awesome! Keep up the great work, and keep inspiring!!!!4 -
suzesvelte wrote: »I have lost lots of weight many times, and gradually re-gained some of it over time, everytime. I am not a "crazy" eater gorging on junk food and sweet drinks - never really have been - indeed what I eat is very healthy. It always was mainly based on food I prepped from scratch with lots of fresh ingredients and my intake has been even better quality over the last few years because I was given a terminal cancer diagnosis and decided to use diet and health to extend my life expectancy. I take that very seriously and eat very well.
However we live in a society where food is easily available, and "treats" are piled high almost everywhere we go, so eating within a calorie target takes constant vigilance. I can gain weight by simply eating out once or twice a week, snacking on a few sweet things now and again and adding "too much" oil to my cooking. It's not much but its enough to gradudally pile the pounds back on.
Using MFP to re-focus awareness of portion control and how small a protion of fat has to be to keep calories under control is working for me again. I really WANT this to be the last time, so I am being very serious about learning how maintainers manage to maintain. What the "best" maintainers in here seem to do is KEEP ON IT -> keep weighing yourself regularly and keep monitoring your intake and crank it up if you gain a few pounds to keep on target far more easily than gaining huge amounts before you start again. Basically you cannot stop.
Now that seems like a shock, and rather tedious, but I reckon we have to do that, and realise that THIN people actually do that too. They may not talk about it, but they will have little techniques they use to moderate their intake and compensate for over-indulgence. They might even lie about it, they might say "they can eat anything" - but that is nor true for many people. There might be a few outliers with faster metabolism, etc. Same as some of us maybe have slower metabolisms, but basically in our culture of abundance, being slim requires constant effort.
I have also been reading the Beck Diet Solution which was recommended in these forums. This author is a doctor who helps many fat people. She really gets into the head of a fat person and shows you how "thin" people think and manage to stay slim. I strongly recommend this book if you want to change the way you THINK about food and eating as a maintenance as well as a loss thing. It is very helpful to realise that THIN people DO exert vigilance, even if you don't notice that they do. This book is teaching me to "think like a thin person" .. and it is very enpowering. Most of my "bad" habits are based on faulty logic and a sense of "unfairness" about how hard it is to stay slim. Giving up that sense of injustice might be my biggest step to successful loss and maintenance.
I hope so!
Sorry to hear about your diagnosis. I have read many articles on holistic and alternative approaches to cancer treatment. A lot of what they say is all about diet and nutrition....it sounds like you're doing an excellent job of giving your body what it needs. Miracles happen everyday. You're wisdom and courage is truly inspiring! God bless you and thanks for sharing!9 -
I never did crash or fad diets, I lost initial weight (about 22 lbs, which put me in a healthy weight zone) fairly slowly and sensibly.
Nothing really went wrong in my life, but when I stopped tracking what I was eating I went back to some of my unhealthy eating habits - desserts too often, eating takeaways a lot, snacking whenever I liked. My 'natural' eating habits tend towards eating fatty, sweet foods and I gained weight over time. Not all of it back, maybe about 75%.
I've maintained my exercise habits and a lot of healthy habits for some time now, and am pretty sure I know how to maintain. I struggle with holidays and events which tend to revolve around food and have definitely been a block in weight loss this year, but at least I know what to do and know I've done it before!
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I lost just short of 5st quite quickly, I was in the gym everyday, swimming and also jogging. I then got quite ill, couldn't eat/drink everything would come back up and so I stopped eating for the fear of throwing up. I'd get intense pain in my lower ribs too that the only thing that would ease it was me making myself sick - turned out to be a bad case off gallstones with a blocked bile duct! They said it was down to my sudden weight loss. I had surgery, they removed my gallbladder and the blocked stones. I'd gone from weighing 221lbs to weighing 154lbs.
Once home and recovering, cooking healthy was the last thing on my mind, so I just ate whatever! Then realising I could eat without suffering pain or being sick I ate and ate and ate!! Sometimes I think for the sake of it!! Looking back I really regret it but no point dwelling on the past. I'm back again md going at it completely different this time. Not stressing about losing weight so much, more getting my head around better choices I can be making.17 -
Thanks for all your responses, I have read each and every one and find them all inspiring and informative. Kudos to everyone for getting back here and climbing back on that horse.12
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Great thread Op! There's so much emphasis in the dieting industry about the weight loss phase, but no one talks about what happens 'after ', and that's where most people end up failing. Hopefully threads like this one will help others see some of the potential pit falls that can happen and they can come up with strategies to avoid them
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OliveGirl128 wrote: »Great thread Op! There's so much emphasis in the dieting industry about the weight loss phase, but no one talks about what happens 'after ', and that's where most people end up failing. Hopefully threads like this one will help others see some of the potential pit falls that can happen and they can come up with strategies to avoid them
The bottom line....the "after" is the exact same as the "diet" with a handful more calories. So make sure to do it in a way you can live with. Forever.34 -
suzesvelte wrote: »I have lost lots of weight many times, and gradually re-gained some of it over time, everytime. I am not a "crazy" eater gorging on junk food and sweet drinks - never really have been - indeed what I eat is very healthy. It always was mainly based on food I prepped from scratch with lots of fresh ingredients and my intake has been even better quality over the last few years because I was given a terminal cancer diagnosis and decided to use diet and health to extend my life expectancy. I take that very seriously and eat very well.
However we live in a society where food is easily available, and "treats" are piled high almost everywhere we go, so eating within a calorie target takes constant vigilance. I can gain weight by simply eating out once or twice a week, snacking on a few sweet things now and again and adding "too much" oil to my cooking. It's not much but its enough to gradudally pile the pounds back on.
Using MFP to re-focus awareness of portion control and how small a protion of fat has to be to keep calories under control is working for me again. I really WANT this to be the last time, so I am being very serious about learning how maintainers manage to maintain. What the "best" maintainers in here seem to do is KEEP ON IT -> keep weighing yourself regularly and keep monitoring your intake and crank it up if you gain a few pounds to keep on target far more easily than gaining huge amounts before you start again. Basically you cannot stop.
Now that seems like a shock, and rather tedious, but I reckon we have to do that, and realise that THIN people actually do that too. They may not talk about it, but they will have little techniques they use to moderate their intake and compensate for over-indulgence. They might even lie about it, they might say "they can eat anything" - but that is nor true for many people. There might be a few outliers with faster metabolism, etc. Same as some of us maybe have slower metabolisms, but basically in our culture of abundance, being slim requires constant effort.
I have also been reading the Beck Diet Solution which was recommended in these forums. This author is a doctor who helps many fat people. She really gets into the head of a fat person and shows you how "thin" people think and manage to stay slim. I strongly recommend this book if you want to change the way you THINK about food and eating as a maintenance as well as a loss thing. It is very helpful to realise that THIN people DO exert vigilance, even if you don't notice that they do. This book is teaching me to "think like a thin person" .. and it is very enpowering. Most of my "bad" habits are based on faulty logic and a sense of "unfairness" about how hard it is to stay slim. Giving up that sense of injustice might be my biggest step to successful loss and maintenance.
I hope so!
Sorry to hear about your diagnosis. I have read many articles on holistic and alternative approaches to cancer treatment. A lot of what they say is all about diet and nutrition....it sounds like you're doing an excellent job of giving your body what it needs. Miracles happen everyday. You're wisdom and courage is truly inspiring! God bless you and thanks for sharing!
Thanks for your kindness, but only fair to say -
my terminal diagnosis is a thing of the past, because my secondaries grew so slowly (I think helped by my holisitic self-care stuff) that they later offered my more surgery that they initially wouldn't consider because I had secondary tumours on both lungs at that time .. in the end one of them didn't grow at all - now assumed to have been killed off by chemo and I have had lung surgery on the one that did keep slowly growing and I am actually cancer-free atm, and keep on the programme to stay that way.
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OliveGirl128 wrote: »Great thread Op! There's so much emphasis in the dieting industry about the weight loss phase, but no one talks about what happens 'after ', and that's where most people end up failing. Hopefully threads like this one will help others see some of the potential pit falls that can happen and they can come up with strategies to avoid them
The bottom line....the "after" is the exact same as the "diet" with a handful more calories. So make sure to do it in a way you can live with. Forever.
Yep, the forever part is the biggie-the maintenance phase is for 20, 30, 40+ years vs the weight loss phase, which is a few months to a couple years usually. People don't mentally prepare themselves for what that actually means and only focus on the short term.25 -
OliveGirl128 wrote: »Great thread Op! There's so much emphasis in the dieting industry about the weight loss phase, but no one talks about what happens 'after ', and that's where most people end up failing. Hopefully threads like this one will help others see some of the potential pit falls that can happen and they can come up with strategies to avoid them
The bottom line....the "after" is the exact same as the "diet" with a handful more calories. So make sure to do it in a way you can live with. Forever.
Exactly!! There are some people that are lucky enough to be able to eat intuitively and not gain over time. There are many of us that can't. If I don't log and measure, I slowly gain. Although I've never really YoYo'd beyond 5 lbs or so after the initial loss of 15lbs. It's like an alarm in my head when I'm consistently getting weights 5 lbs higher, then I get back to logging. Unmanaged diet for me is exactly what that name implies.
If you don't learn to eat properly at maintenance after losing, you will regain. It is as simple as that. The weight loss phase is only part of the equation. I would say that is the biggest single reason people lose, regain and return.13 -
suzesvelte wrote: »suzesvelte wrote: »I have lost lots of weight many times, and gradually re-gained some of it over time, everytime. I am not a "crazy" eater gorging on junk food and sweet drinks - never really have been - indeed what I eat is very healthy. It always was mainly based on food I prepped from scratch with lots of fresh ingredients and my intake has been even better quality over the last few years because I was given a terminal cancer diagnosis and decided to use diet and health to extend my life expectancy. I take that very seriously and eat very well.
However we live in a society where food is easily available, and "treats" are piled high almost everywhere we go, so eating within a calorie target takes constant vigilance. I can gain weight by simply eating out once or twice a week, snacking on a few sweet things now and again and adding "too much" oil to my cooking. It's not much but its enough to gradudally pile the pounds back on.
Using MFP to re-focus awareness of portion control and how small a protion of fat has to be to keep calories under control is working for me again. I really WANT this to be the last time, so I am being very serious about learning how maintainers manage to maintain. What the "best" maintainers in here seem to do is KEEP ON IT -> keep weighing yourself regularly and keep monitoring your intake and crank it up if you gain a few pounds to keep on target far more easily than gaining huge amounts before you start again. Basically you cannot stop.
Now that seems like a shock, and rather tedious, but I reckon we have to do that, and realise that THIN people actually do that too. They may not talk about it, but they will have little techniques they use to moderate their intake and compensate for over-indulgence. They might even lie about it, they might say "they can eat anything" - but that is nor true for many people. There might be a few outliers with faster metabolism, etc. Same as some of us maybe have slower metabolisms, but basically in our culture of abundance, being slim requires constant effort.
I have also been reading the Beck Diet Solution which was recommended in these forums. This author is a doctor who helps many fat people. She really gets into the head of a fat person and shows you how "thin" people think and manage to stay slim. I strongly recommend this book if you want to change the way you THINK about food and eating as a maintenance as well as a loss thing. It is very helpful to realise that THIN people DO exert vigilance, even if you don't notice that they do. This book is teaching me to "think like a thin person" .. and it is very enpowering. Most of my "bad" habits are based on faulty logic and a sense of "unfairness" about how hard it is to stay slim. Giving up that sense of injustice might be my biggest step to successful loss and maintenance.
I hope so!
Sorry to hear about your diagnosis. I have read many articles on holistic and alternative approaches to cancer treatment. A lot of what they say is all about diet and nutrition....it sounds like you're doing an excellent job of giving your body what it needs. Miracles happen everyday. You're wisdom and courage is truly inspiring! God bless you and thanks for sharing!
Thanks for your kindness, but only fair to say -
my terminal diagnosis is a thing of the past, because my secondaries grew so slowly (I think helped by my holisitic self-care stuff) that they later offered my more surgery that they initially wouldn't consider because I had secondary tumours on both lungs at that time .. in the end one of them didn't grow at all - now assumed to have been killed off by chemo and I have had lung surgery on the one that did keep slowly growing and I am actually cancer-free atm, and keep on the programme to stay that way.
So glad to hear this!! I have a daughter who is a survivor of metastatic breast cancer and she is doing great at keeping the cancer at bay with diet and other holistic treatment integrated with the traditional treatment. She was also given a terminal diagnosis but she is gonna be around for awhile!! Congrats to you!
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I lost around 60 pounds over 2 years here on MFP, and hit my goal weight - then "flunked" maintenance! Like others I had been a yo yo dieter all my life but never actually lost a significant amount til I came here.. Once I hit my goal weight I was so thrilled i had FINALLY lost all the excess weight i'd carried for years..... I Got complacent and I admit also a little bit cocky...like I was "done'. And even when I saw a few pounds creeping up here and there I simply told myself it was just 5 lbs.. no worries.. and of course i avoided the scale... til I finally realized the creeping had turned into 30lbs regained
I never left MFP or my wonderful group - I just used it as a social interaction, forgetting why I came here in the first place. Happily I've found my way again tho and well on the way back to goal weight, and taking the lessons I learned with me!17 -
I have lost 50 to 75 pounds three times in my life. This is my fourth time and I have lost 63 of my 85 pound goal. I gained weight really fast during puberty and found myself at 200 pounds at 13 with high blood pressure. This scared me and I went through very unhealthy measure so lose weight. It was the early 90s and all I knew was eat less and workout. So I went to the extreme with both. I kept the weight off tI'll college when the freshman 15 turned into 75. I was miserable and ended up deciding to take a year off of school. I again lost the weight in the same method and kept it off thanks to a physical job cleaning businesses. Then I moved got a muh less active and more stressful job and bam I was 207 by my wedding at which point I discovered mfp and lost 23 pounds before finding out I was pregnant. Decided to forget the fit life and bam I was up to 220 after having my first. Went back on mfp and lost 52 pounds but then started that stressful job and let it take over my life. Gained about half the weight back before finding out I was pregnant again. This time i was 235 after having my baby and felt defeated. But I knew mfp worked and now that I am done having kids I know I can stick to it. My deficit is moderate I workout 30 to 40 minutes a day and educate myself on nutrition and exercise every chance i get. I love that mfp has simplified the process for me. Taking the guesswork out has allowed me to lose the weight the healthy weight and will also help me during maintenance.15
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Would you have stayed on mfp longer, tracking, until you had been in maintenance for a year? I definitely would have hung in there and stayed faithful on MFP.
Would you have lost weight less aggressively so that it was easier to adjust to maintenance? Probably so. I got to goal in less than 6 months last time.
Was your entire focus on the weight loss rather than on changing your entire lifestyle? Yes, for the most part it was. I was trying to get slim real fast before summer got here.
Did something health related come up that caused you to 'fall off the proverbial wagon' ? No.
I learned a couple of things the last time I lost weight and got to goal and it was (1) that I lost the weight way too fast and got to goal in under six months and I should have made it more of a lifestyle change and went slower with the weight loss, and (2) no matter how long I weighed/measured my food I was not ready to just guess at portion sizes just because I reached my goal.5 -
Having lost over 100 lb and kept it off for years and gained it back... twice! At this point I think the simple truth is that's the way it is for me. I did treat it as a "lifestyle" the last time, but the truth is, things don't stay the same. Going to the gym 6 times a week and paying attention to every calorie requires an amount of dedication almost nobody can sustain forever. Keeping weight off is hard work- just as hard as losing it. I know myself by now and I know that I will be up and down probably until the day I die. The only other choice is to just stay up.
To be specific, last time, after maintaining a 100+ lb loss for about 4 years through constant vigilance, I started having health problems (back pain, dizziness) that cut into my workout time. Then my beloved cats died and I got pretty depressed and didn't want to do anything. Then the real kicker was being forced to move farther from work and having to commute. It's so much harder to find the time now.
Anyway, not to be a total downer but life is like that- you will think you got it, you can continue for life, but things happen and we aren't robots. I think it's healthier for me to recognize that. I will never maintain a "normal" weight forever. It's always going to be a give and take. And I think it's like that for most of us who have been obese, especially if we first got that way as kids/teens. But almost nobody wants to look at reality. We are all hoping something will be different, a magic solution, a right way.
Sorry, it doesn't exist.22 -
So I wrong above that I gained weight back due to some massive downsides in my life and falling into depression. It wasn't too bad though: I only gained back about 17lbs over 6 months (gosh, 6 months being depressed) while having lost about 40 originally. So no big drama.4
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OliveGirl128 wrote: »OliveGirl128 wrote: »Great thread Op! There's so much emphasis in the dieting industry about the weight loss phase, but no one talks about what happens 'after ', and that's where most people end up failing. Hopefully threads like this one will help others see some of the potential pit falls that can happen and they can come up with strategies to avoid them
The bottom line....the "after" is the exact same as the "diet" with a handful more calories. So make sure to do it in a way you can live with. Forever.
Yep, the forever part is the biggie-the maintenance phase is for 20, 30, 40+ years vs the weight loss phase, which is a few months to a couple years usually. People don't mentally prepare themselves for what that actually means and only focus on the short term.
Yes to this! I'm here on MFP without ever having been overweight. However, I did put some weight on gradually without even noticing -- from eating mindlessly, mostly. I realized how easy it would be to become overweight, and started keeping track here on MFP. I imagine I'll keep doing so for a long time. I also have a Fitbit -- not perfect, but helpful in keeping me on track.
Without paying attention, I know I'd become overweight; there is just too much food everywhere, all the time nowadays.7 -
Gained / lost / gained / all through my mid 40s. At 45, hit 404 lbs. Had weight loss surgery (at 45), lost 200 lbs. Now seven years later, still down 200 lbs, and I use things like MFP to keep it that way. MFP is the best tracker I've used yet. If I don't track, I regain. This last time, I regained to 220, but now am back down at 200 using MFP, and I am still losing. This time I am adding strength training to rebuild lost bulk with muscle. MFP will be a huge part of that.7
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I started at 192, lost 35lbs. Then I got pregnant. After the pregnancy was over I was at 178lbs. Now I have a diabetes risk so I'm really trying to keep the weight down. I'm down to 173. You just have to stay dedicated while in maintenance.3
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I stopped because it was hard counting calories and tracking every meal. I didin't put on weight after I quit, but just maintained what I had. Now I am experimenting with portion control and eating less than I think it's enough and I started loosing weight again. It's easier for me this way since I'm not restricting certain food types eg if i want chocholate I will have chocholate.6
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