You loose weight and gain it back up due to lifestyle ??

one_acosta

AnnPT77

Real, long-term improvement (in weight or almost anything else) only happens if we change our lifestyle. The bigger the improvement we want, likely the lifestyle difference will be bigger, too.

So don't diet. Find new habits you can keep up permanently, both eating and activity. This would be habits that involve eating foods you find tasty and practical, and add up to an appropriate number of calories (whether counting them or not). This would be habits of moving (not just exercise, also daily life) that are ideally fun, but at least tolerable and practical.

Find habits that can continue long term happily, and practice them until they happen almost on autopilot. Other parts of our lives will get complicated and demanding eventually, and "motivation" won't last forever, so we need easy new routine habits.

Those habits need to accommodate some of the things in your poll, like how to handle eating out with friends, how to handle times when the job gets demanding and leaves little time for cooking/exercise, how to keep cravings manageable.

Restrictive eating rules and punitively intense exercise aren't necessary, and can be counterproductive.

Think about weight management differently: It's a forever endeavor, and depends on new habits, a new lifestyle.

I was chubby - mildly overweight - in high school. I lost weight in college without even trying, just because I was moving so much more, and mostly eating in a dorm cafeteria rather than snacking all day. Then I got out of college, got married (to someone who was larger/male so could eat a lot more without gaining, and got a desk job. I gradually gained weight.

Starting somewhere in my later 20s, I became overweight, then obese. I lost a very few pounds here and there and fluctuated a bit, but basically stayed overweight/obese for around 30 years. I got athletically active (training hard 6 days most weeks), but stayed fat. I retired, still stayed fat, still stayed athletic.

Back in 2015 at age 59-60, I lost from class 1 obese to a healthy weight using MFP. I've been at a healthy weight ever since, now age 68, still active.

I still eat the same range of foods I did when obese, just different portion sizes and frequencies of calorie-dense foods. I still do the same types/amounts of exercise I did when obese. What's different is that I'm not constantly eating more calories than I burn.

In theory, eating 100 excess calories daily (on average) will add 10 pounds a year. It doesn't necessarily take huge changes to manage weight effectively - not necessarily as much drama as many people think.

Best wishes