Heavy sigh... how much I messed up, proved in black and white

13bbird13

I was housecleaning this weekend and found a box of my old WW Points Plus stuff from 2012, including weigh-in booklets. I was a Lifetime member, after going down from my all-time high of 160 to 135 pounds and maintaining it for months. I just returned to MFP in September 2019, at a new all-time high weight of 180. I have had several firm talks with myself over the past 48 hours about not letting that happen again, but that it happened at all is pretty scary... all that work to lose 25 pounds, then I went and put on 45! (I'm now 152, so heading in the right direction.)

88olds

It is scary. And I’m afraid regaining is likely the rule, not the exception. I started WW in 2006. The first thing I noticed was the revolving door nature of the place. I made goal weight but unlike nearly everyone else I met at WW, I kept attending my meeting most weeks. Almost 10 years. Only quit when we retired and moved to FL.

Not that there’s any magic in WW meetings. But it kept me from thinking that I had completed anything.

Start thinking about your life at GW now. Always consider how the things you do to lose weight fit with your overall life satisfaction. There’s more to it than just getting the number on the scale to go down. There really is no finish line. Good luck.

deannalfisher

WW (and other groups) stay in business because people keep coming back - they keep changing the style etc

13bbird13

We had a WW group at work that I really liked, but I fell off the wagon when I had to go downtown at night to get to meetings, with a bunch of people I didn't know. WW did work for me, I'll say that. But these days MFP fits into my lifestyle a lot better. It's true, as 88olds says, that "there really is no finish line"... it's very much an ongoing process.

vegan4lyfe2012

Same thing happened to me. When I started WW about 10 years ago, I was at 210#. Got down to 145#. And it's steadily crept back up and down and up and down. Now I'm at 195#. Depressing for sure.

elisa123gal

I understand how finding those old materials showing you at a goal weight was is disheartening.

You sound like me when I spent a morning trying on all the jeans in my closet. It made me sick to think I actually fit into most of them at one time. I spent about two days feeling lousy about it. But trying them all on motivated me to get back to who I was. Those old WW records show that you did it before and you can do it again.

hipari

That black-and-white proof of my yo-yoing is why I spent most of early 2010s creating a new MFP profile every time I ”started again”. Now I’ve been using the same profile since 2016 and yes, I have yo-yoed in weight, but I have made consistent progress in other areas of my life and health. Seeing the black-and-white (well, blue-and-white in the app) helps me understand my life and the decisions I make instead of making this a series of unconnected data points.

By the way, it’s interesting how different everyone’s weight and plans are. Your all time high weight is 180, my goal weight is 175 and I’m a female.

13bbird13

Well, one thing was a comfort, anyway... I was 50 in 2012, so now at 58 I at least know what an achievable and realistic weight is for my age. I was 95 pounds in high school and wouldn't even TRY to regain that!