How do people gain weight back?
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I was one of those people. I was 340 got down to 200 and I'm back up to 280. Honestly for me it was life. Stress, depression, anxiety. Like others said losing weight was easy (for me) . Maintenance was different. I thought I was ready and I wasn't. Honestly I knew my weight was going back up but part of me didn't care the other part me was scared. For me I never been that small. Yeah still fat and overweight but I felt so exposed. It's an easy thing to do to lose and gain and I applaud those that can keep it off. This time around I'm working more on my self mentally.6
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Stretchy pants. Makes it easier to deny the weight creep.10
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There is an entire forum for maintenance. IMO overeating is an addiction just like any other. Only because we can't not eat, it is not something you can just cold turkey like smoking or alcohol. Many of us folks who have yo yo'd all our lives are really really good at losing weight and pretty dang bad at keeping it off for years and years. I am working on year 2 this time. It is good to learn from our experiences and you would think after decades we WOULD be able to make the changes necessary but again ***addiction*** for whatever reason - stress, injury, life. work change etc it doesn't matter. There are several threads on going in the maintenance forum right now which are just for "maintainers" who have gone over their range but are working to catch it early. There is also a thread about hitting "scream" weight. Mostly you can see that it all comes down to the individual "giving a damn". The typical yo yo 'er is one who is a good dieter and the weight only comes back a little at a time - up 2, down 1, up 5, down 3, up 5, down 3 etc. until all the weight is back usually over a several year time frame and the sad thing is the weight is usually up a little more and it's mostly fat when gained so not only is it a higher weight but the composition is a problem.
There is some trite saying about people who don't learn from experience and doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. When I lost about 30 lbs in 2017, I decided I needed to do something different this time. I will let you know in 5 or more years if I was able to get different results this time then the last 45 years of my life. LOL. I set my goal slightly higher than I had before and actually reached it. Most (I think) of my previous efforts always ended up close to goal but with binging and a bounce with no controlled move into maintaining. So I think the transition is critical. And along with ending in a bounce of some sort, I usually withdrew from logging and weighing after a time. Not at first but over a few weeks or months.
This time I have continued to engage with MFP friends and logging and weighing to some extent. I started watching the maintenance forum closely and reading there a LOT. I am hoping that will keep the "I don't give a kitten" attitude back. I also this time for the first time ever discarded all my larger size clothes when I met goal. In a huge closet purge.
It is very easy when you are in the middle of a successful loss to swear it will never happen again but we should not kid ourselves. It takes work to maintain. And it has some harder times and some easier times. You will learn a lot about yourself. Are you triggered? Can you moderate or do you have to keep foods completely off the menu or out of the house? One thing you do learn is that you can't exercise your way out of a poor overeating trend. Oh maybe for a little while but that's a zero sum game.
Best of luck OP in meeting your goal and maintaining successfully. There are definitely good tools here for both weight loss and maintaining on MFP and some really REALLY smart experienced kind folks who will help.
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Life happens. For many people, the issue is comfort/stress eating, or they have psychological issues all tied up in their eating habits, or their weight was a defense mechanism. Once the priority of "weight loss" is gone, all those stressors come back into play, quietly and sometimes subconsciously. You see the weight creeping up but tell yourself, "I deserve this comfort/enjoyment/safety right now, I'll lose the little bit of weight once things get better". But the 5 lbs becomes 10 becomes 20 and now you feel like a failure which makes you double down on the comfort/stress/safety eating. Poof.
Making sure you deal with all the reasons you became overweight while you are losing weight, and planning new reactions & habits, hobbies & comforts before you actually get to maintenance is key IMHO.
I am a data geek. The data gives me the comfort and safety that I used to look for in food and in rules around food. It's why I expect to continue logging for the foreseeable future. I've also become more active, which gives me more food freedom, assuming I retain my health. Logging and walking have helped me maintain for a couple of years, knock on wood this will continue.
The bolded is why I trained myself to consider food as fuel, not something to "comfort" me. When the fuel tank on you car is full, you don't put more gas in it, I try to treat my body the same way. I eat nutrient dense foods 80-90% of the time, but also throw in some other things until the "tank" is full of fuel.
After starting to get pudgy in college, I've used this thought process for the last 40 years and have kept within +/- 10% of my high school graduation weight. It works for me even when life happens (early deaths of both parents, weeks of 16 hour work days, hospitalized children, surgeries and illnesses that limited my physical activity, etc)
For me, it worked as a good mindset change.3 -
texasredreb wrote: »WARNING: My post below might be triggering for some.
I lost and regained 80-ish pounds twice; I'm currently losing weight for the 3rd and hopefully last time.
The first time I hit my goal weight and almost immediately resumed eating my previous normal. I was in a new relationship that was, frankly, food based. We loved to eat. He was already big and I caught up and regained in a couple of years.
The second time, I was really frustrated with my girth and went to extreme measures to lose it. I lost quickly (and expensively) using Medifast. I hit goal weight and had no idea what to do. I started swapping out similar calorie regular foods for the Medifast foods. I managed to maintain that loss for about 5 years.
Then "life" happened. I was hit with a surprise divorce; he was my entire support system. I suddenly found myself with no home, no friends and no family. I was in full blown survival panic and actually lost a lot of weight because I wasn't eating. I was also in full hormonal peri-menopause. Through sheer determination after a series of unfortunate mistakes, I finally landed on my feet.
After the divorce, I rented a room from a woman close in age who told me she was a nursing student and a waitress. It turns out she was a stripper and a drug dealer. I kept to myself and saved money to get out once I found out the truth. I'm a teacher. I had to get out quickly, but had no money to do so and no support network to help. Unfortunately, her house was raided and I was (briefly) arrested. I incurred no charges because the authorities quickly figured out I was not involved--still super stressful. I was able to rent a small apartment, by myself. It was glorious! Life was good. I had my own space and was able to cook meals. I cooked comfort foods, not health foods...I decided to foster a dog from my volunteer workplace (dog trainer at a shelter). I quickly realized that the dog could not live in an apartment. I had to find a house or return him to certain death (no exaggeration).
I found a "too good to be true" deal on a house that a fellow teacher owned. She wanted to keep the house but move in with her boyfriend. Great location, great price (rental). The huge caveat was that the house came with a built in room mate. My coworker who owned the house was an older female like me and she assured me George was safe and easy to live with. He was a professor at the University of Texas. Super smart and kept to himself, but friendly and quirky. He was okay, I thought. My foster dog had a yard! I had the whole 4/3 house to myself minus the master bedroom, which was a self contained studio with a separate entrance. George and I got along fine. The dog bonded with him. All was well. UNTIL...he committed suicide in MY portion of the house in a bedroom I used for storage. I lived with the body for several days because I didn't know. I didn't know.... I didn't know why the dog suddenly regressed and started attacking me. I didn't know where George was. I didn't know why my house was starting to smell. After I found out, I had to live in the house for the rest of my lease (10 months)! The landlord/co-worker would not let me out of the lease.That room was a disaster. All my possessions stored in there were ruined. It was not a nice, tidy death. The dog regularly attacked me after that because he was so traumatized. I was traumatized. The room had to have a "crime scene" clean. The landlord did not want to do it because it's expensive, so she closed the room and ignored it. I ate, and ate, and ate. I wanted to die along with George.
I finally saved enough money to get out of that <now> haunted hell hole and buy my own brand new, never been lived in house. No dead bodies. George did his deed in 10/2016. I moved out in 8/2017. I'm just now starting to get over it. The dog is now my dog! I'm just now feeling ready to tackle my weight. I was not a priority for a number of years. Escaping George's demons and healing myself and my dog were my top priorities.
Life. Happened. In a big, ugly way.
Wow....what a story! Is your dog better now?2 -
I regained my weight after developing a health problem and family problems. I was not unaware because I was stepping on the scale weekly but it was not the priority/focus to do something about it for awhile. I did not gain 25 lbs back in a week or a month. It was over the course of a year or 2.
I think we need to throw out the idea that you lose weight for a year and then will just stay that way. Weight management takes lifelong effort and changes.
If you for sure don't want to regain weight then do things like weigh in regularly, log your food and drinks, keep using the food scale. Get medical checkups and work on metal health issues with positive tools.7 -
I regained my weight after developing a health problem and family problems. I was not unaware because I was stepping on the scale weekly but it was not the priority/focus to do something about it for awhile. I did not gain 25 lbs back in a week or a month. It was over the course of a year or 2.
I think we need to throw out the idea that you lose weight for a year and then will just stay that way. Weight management takes lifelong effort and changes.
If you for sure don't want to regain weight then do things like weigh in regularly, log your food and drinks, keep using the food scale. Get medical checkups and work on metal health issues with positive tools.
Absolutely!!
When I put on weight between 2011 and the beginning of 2015 (4 years), I gained approx. 20 kg in that time. That's 5 kg/year. That's 0.4 kg/month. I didn't go to sleep one night and wake up the next morning 20 kg heavier, it's a slow, sneaky process.
And if a person uses the calculation that 3500 calories = 1 lb ... and 1 lb = 0.45 kg ...
Let's say I overate by 3500/month/ 30 days in a month = 117 extra calories per day over maintenance. That's like a banana or 1.5 hardboiled eggs or 28 grams of cheese or 16 almonds ...
If you're not keeping track, how easy would it be to put a bit of extra cheese on that sandwich? Or to have a second banana if you're feeling hungry one afternoon? Or to pick up one of those little packets of almonds in a convenience store for a snack on the go?
There's nothing wrong with any of those things, and you're not eating copious quantities of them ... but maybe they're just enough to nudge you over maintenance.10 -
I regained my weight after developing a health problem and family problems. I was not unaware because I was stepping on the scale weekly but it was not the priority/focus to do something about it for awhile. I did not gain 25 lbs back in a week or a month. It was over the course of a year or 2.
I think we need to throw out the idea that you lose weight for a year and then will just stay that way. Weight management takes lifelong effort and changes.
If you for sure don't want to regain weight then do things like weigh in regularly, log your food and drinks, keep using the food scale. Get medical checkups and work on metal health issues with positive tools.
Absolutely!!
When I put on weight between 2011 and the beginning of 2015 (4 years), I gained approx. 20 kg in that time. That's 5 kg/year. That's 0.4 kg/month. I didn't go to sleep one night and wake up the next morning 20 kg heavier, it's a slow, sneaky process.
And if a person uses the calculation that 3500 calories = 1 lb ... and 1 lb = 0.45 kg ...
Let's say I overate by 3500/month/ 30 days in a month = 117 extra calories per day over maintenance. That's like a banana or 1.5 hardboiled eggs or 28 grams of cheese or 16 almonds ...
If you're not keeping track, how easy would it be to put a bit of extra cheese on that sandwich? Or to have a second banana if you're feeling hungry one afternoon? Or to pick up one of those little packets of almonds in a convenience store for a snack on the go?
There's nothing wrong with any of those things, and you're not eating copious quantities of them ... but maybe they're just enough to nudge you over maintenance.
Same here. I did the math on the 40 pounds I gained in 5 years and it was something like 80 calories per day over maintenance (granted maintenance got a bit higher as I got heavier, but not significantly). Not as if I was diving into pints of ice cream every night.7 -
I’ll tell you exactly what happened to me. I treated weight loss as a “project”. I had laser focus and full commitment and lost 75#. Project done, move on to the next. It took a year to lose and a year to gain back.
That was 2012.
In 2016 I started again, lost the same 75#, in a year, and have been battling ever since to keep it off. Its easy for some, hard for others.14 -
Wow....what a story! Is your dog better now?
He is! He was a project dog when I first agreed to foster him, so living with him isn't always easy, but it's always an adventure! His main issue is separation anxiety that manifests as an attack on the person trying to leave him (me!). I haven't been bitten in over a year and he has settled overall, but still has occasional freak outs. His name is Willie.
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Please give Willie an extra hug from me
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it is a lot of work watching your weight. I guess I had just rather do what I jolly well please and then you know what happens. I have got to be willing to do the work.2
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Vacations knock me for a loop. Went on a cruise and ate and drank horribly for a week, gained 15-20 lbs and was horrified, that was almost half what I lost the first go round. Then had an injury, plantar fasciitis , so was unable to run, which has always been my main tool to lose weight. So that weight stayed. And I had maintained my loss for a year prior to the cruise.
Another time I was nearly back to goal and went on a hiking trip with a friend. While we hiked 10-15 miles a day, we also ate well as there were some good restaurants in the area. That put on five lbs which I had a problem shedding, again since I was unable to run due to an ankle injury I got shortly after.
Basically vacations and injuries preventing me from running are my Achilles heel. I hurt my knee last year when I fell down a ravine hiking, and weight crept up during the year even though I did track my food intake. My knee injury is better and now that I’m running again I’m once again almost to my goal, down 15 lbs in last two months. It is odd, if I burn same calories by walking or whatever, it seems to not have same impact as when I’m able to run.4 -
Same reason people get back into debt I suppose.5
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I was doing very well last year, on a consistent downward trend, maintaining good habits.
Then it was Christmas, then immediately after was made redundant. Spent three months on a dramatically reduced budget, bored, stressed, fed up. Essentially watching tv and eating biscuits. Wasn't long before trousers stopped fitting.
It is possible to know you shouldn't be doing something, and not have the will to change it.
Got a new job in March, still working on getting back to where I was before.8 -
This happened to me.
Over a year and a half I went from 230 to 160. That was A LOT of work. Tracking activity on my Garmin, getting extra steps in, weighing/measuring EVERYTHING that went into my mouth, counting calories... It was seriously an obsession and I was exhausted by it all. So a took a break before trying for my goal of 130-140. But then life happened.
Over the next year and a half I went from 160 to 215. I saw what was happening. It made me feel disgusted with myself. But I am taking care of three young kids with increasingly less help. At first my husband wasn’t around much because he worked a full time third shift job and was a Navy Reservist. Then he left for Coast Guard boot camp. I was “alone” for those two months but still lived close to family. After that we moved from Chicago to San Francisco (last May/June) and San Francisco to Boston (3 months ago).
I’m freaking exhausted. I’m trying really hard now to get the weight back off, but LIFE. Long story short, I thought like this once, too. I thought I would NEVER gain it back, that I wouldn’t be like so many others. But it’s SO easy to lose focus and go back to old habits.
Good read: The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg9 -
This isn't my first time trying to lose weight, probably won't be my last. When I was younger, I used to wonder about why people allowed themselves to get fat. Honestly, I'd go up 10 lbs., notice, lose it, rinse and repeat. But life has a funny way of kicking you in the *bleep* sometimes. That's what happened to me. I had an accident that kept me bedridden for months, the doctors wouldn't let me exercise, even though I was dying to get moving, because I'd broken both my femurs and they weren't sure that the bones were healed enough.
When I finally got the go-ahead to exercise again, I found that I could no longer run without pain. Decades after the initial injury, I still can't run. And to make matters worse, I injured my thyroid in that accident, and I still don't think my doctor is giving me enough thyroid replacement, because my energy levels are so low. Basically, what happens is I exercise, watch my diet, lose the weight, then crash. I have zero energy and gain all the weight back as I'm trying to get my energy levels on track. I'm still trying, trying very hard, but I haven't found the magic diet/exercise balance that is sustainable for me, personally, because my injuries, though as healed as they'll ever be, have turned me into a bit of a freak. And it's hard to know exactly what's going to work for me long-term, because I *am* a freak.
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texasredreb wrote: »Wow....what a story! Is your dog better now?
He is! He was a project dog when I first agreed to foster him, so living with him isn't always easy, but it's always an adventure! His main issue is separation anxiety that manifests as an attack on the person trying to leave him (me!). I haven't been bitten in over a year and he has settled overall, but still has occasional freak outs. His name is Willie.
What breed is this guy? How heavy is he? (mine's a rescue and she looks a lot like this)1 -
I lost 50lbs & kept it off for a year, wasn't too hard, THEN...I got pneumonia & couldn't exercise but ate the same, then I added a little snack in the evenings, then I went back to HIIT class, but had another birthday & found it was a little too much for me plus our daughter & her 3 kids moved next door(she's getting divorce) & we found ourselves interacting with them thoughout the day, so bottom line is I got out of the exercise habit & got into the snack in the evening habit & gained 10 lbs! BUT I lost 2 so far, plus all the new clothes I bought were all a little loose so I really noticed when they fit just right3
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I'd like to add to my post that at family/friends get togethers, I still ate within my calories & bypast many foods, I started to have a little of them. The other thing is I eat out a few times/month due to some friends who I get together with for lunch, before I'd order a salad & bring my own dressing, I started to order other things. It sounds small but many small things add up3
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texasredreb, how horrible, can't imagine what you went through, so sorry you experienced this, I'm so sorry for you others that went through such horrific circumstances too2
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I didn't do it without noticing, but I did do it. Life got hard and I went back to comfort eating, simple as that.6
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@texasredreb Of course it is. Look at what you've been through and survived, bless your heart. You can do it.texasredreb wrote: »
Hopefully my ability to lose weight again is as resilient as the rest of me.
Myself, I've never been obese, but a few pounds here and there make me extremely uncomfortable. I hit my goal weight and have been living with some weight creep for a bit now and it's simply due to the fact that I haven't been willing to weigh and measure my food and restrict myself. Maybe it's time to get back to what I know works for me.
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@texasredreb Of course it is. Look at what you've been through and survived, bless your heart. You can do it.texasredreb wrote: »
Hopefully my ability to lose weight again is as resilient as the rest of me.
Myself, I've never been obese, but a few pounds here and there make me extremely uncomfortable. I hit my goal weight and have been living with some weight creep for a bit now and it's simply due to the fact that I haven't been willing to weigh and measure my food and restrict myself. Maybe it's time to get back to what I know works for me.
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nutmegoreo wrote: »
What breed is this guy? How heavy is he? (mine's a rescue and she looks a lot like this)
He is a Louisiana Catahoula Leopard Dog!! That's a mouthful, I know. Also known as a Catahoula Cur. The breed is common in the South. Per his DNA testing he is purebred. Per his temperament and physical attributes, he is poorly bred--likely from a backyard breeder. He's about 50lbs, but I keep him a few pounds light due to a hip replacement surgery. He has a lot of mechanical hardware in his hips.
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I have lost over 50 pounds 4 times in my life and working on #5. I don't just start going back up immediately, I generally hold the weight off, anywhere from 1 year to 10 years until some major life event causes me to lose focus. When I lose the weight I am usually in a good place in my life overall and can focus on the problem of being overweight. When I gain the weight I usually have something else that is using the mental energy I need to use on losing or maintaining weight. I know I am gaining weight, and I don't like it, but at that time in my life I am usually making the judgement that large pizza for myself is worth it!5
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Winter. I'm up north where the days are 7 hours long and nothing much to do most of the time outdoors. 10lb gain every single winter and drop it like a stone come March. I do use the weight to try to gain a few cm on my arms.1
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I haven't read this entire thread but I'm sure I'll echo others when I say even the strictest calorie counters can get lazy and regain some weight. I'm maintaining and in my sixth year but have regained 10-14 lb at times (from loss of 130+) just by getting cocky and deciding it's okay to drink that big bottle of milk (260 calories) on a road trip when I'd normally guzzle water only - or order the bigger of two favorite entrees (810 calories instead of 530 calories). It adds up quickly. A one-time "event" can turn into a habit really easily and that definitely goes for bad habits & routines like getting donuts every Saturday morning (I'm not saying no one should do that but for me it's a bad idea).
The important thing IMO is to get back on track quickly as well.11
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