Stuck in yo-yo cycles the last 4 years

noobletmcnugget

I need advice because I don't really know what to do anymore. Each of the past four years I have lost 15-20 pounds. I always get super committed to it, and lose it by netting about 1200 calories each day. But then every single year I end up regaining it over the course of like 5-6 months because I just reach my goals and then stop tracking and just exert no self control over my eating. Like this year, I've probably gained back about 10lbs. In my mind I've justified my constant overeating as being due to stress, but that's just an excuse at the end of the day.

It's just so frustrating how I go from being super super committed for months on end and then it's like a switch flips and I go to the other extreme of just eating everything all the time and not doing anything about it. But it's never intentional. I can't remember a time in the last four years where I haven't been trying to lose weight. All I do is either feel obsessive about losing or guilty for not.

Basically I just wanted to look for advice on how to turn get out of this cycle and just get some sort of long term consistency. I do not want to be trapped in this cycle for the rest of my life

kommodevaran

Severly undereating for too long is stress, and eating 1200 calories is apparantly too little food for you. How about increasing calorie goal and be super committed to eating enough but not too much, not to eating as little as possible?

TavistockToad

noobletmcnugget wrote: »

I need advice because I don't really know what to do anymore. Each of the past four years I have lost 15-20 pounds. I always get super committed to it, and lose it by netting about 1200 calories each day. But then every single year I end up regaining it over the course of like 5-6 months because I just reach my goals and then stop tracking and just exert no self control over my eating. Like this year, I've probably gained back about 10lbs. In my mind I've justified my constant overeating as being due to stress, but that's just an excuse at the end of the day.

It's just so frustrating how I go from being super super committed for months on end and then it's like a switch flips and I go to the other extreme of just eating everything all the time and not doing anything about it. But it's never intentional. I can't remember a time in the last four years where I haven't been trying to lose weight. All I do is either feel obsessive about losing or guilty for not.

Basically I just wanted to look for advice on how to turn get out of this cycle and just get some sort of long term consistency. I do not want to be trapped in this cycle for the rest of my life

start with finding what is actually maintenance for you, so you're not gaining or losing.

given that you only have 15-20 pounds to lose, do it slowly, so you're not feeling deprived of anything.

jayemes

^ This

xxzenabxx

noobletmcnugget wrote: »

I need advice because I don't really know what to do anymore. Each of the past four years I have lost 15-20 pounds. I always get super committed to it, and lose it by netting about 1200 calories each day. But then every single year I end up regaining it over the course of like 5-6 months because I just reach my goals and then stop tracking and just exert no self control over my eating. Like this year, I've probably gained back about 10lbs. In my mind I've justified my constant overeating as being due to stress, but that's just an excuse at the end of the day.

It's just so frustrating how I go from being super super committed for months on end and then it's like a switch flips and I go to the other extreme of just eating everything all the time and not doing anything about it. But it's never intentional. I can't remember a time in the last four years where I haven't been trying to lose weight. All I do is either feel obsessive about losing or guilty for not.

Basically I just wanted to look for advice on how to turn get out of this cycle and just get some sort of long term consistency. I do not want to be trapped in this cycle for the rest of my life

Find out your maintenance calories from an online calculator to figure out your TDEE. Then only eat 300 calories below that and maybe add in some exercise- hint, doing exercise allows you to eat back half your exercise calories. Not bad. So if your TDEE is 2300 like mine is, you would eat 2000 calories and still lose weight! That sounds much more doable. And if you did exercise for an hour and burnt 300 calories you could have around 150 extra calories. 1200 is really restrictive, and I personally would only do it on a really lazy day where I literally just lay there and watch movies. Btw this is coming from a person who was in the same boat as you. I've yoyo dieted for years, recovered from an ED but now I'm trying to do it the proper way. Take my exampleI'm 157lbs and I've got around 30lbs to lose! Feel free to add me.

noobletmcnugget

kommodevaran wrote: »

Severly undereating for too long is stress, and eating 1200 calories is apparantly too little food for you. How about increasing calorie goal and be super committed to eating enough but not too much, not to eating as little as possible?

I'm going to try giving this a go. I think I'll try setting my goals to losing half a pound a week and see how that goes.

I feel like being so strict when I'm on it just makes me miserable and so it's even harder to get back on track because I know how difficult it is to really restrict.