Why do people gain all their weight back so often?

mahanaibu

Perhaps one reason is because you don't ever lose fat cells once they have been created, the cells just shrink with weight loss. Now, it takes less energy for cells to expand than to conduct mitosis and create new fat cells. So, once the cells have been created, or once you gain a significant amount of weight, you will always have those same fat cells from when you were bigger. The only way that I know of to remove fat cells is by surgery, which is dangerous and can damage your body.

Further reading: http://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20080505/fat-cells-slim-up-but-dont-ship-out

Yes!! This, too, is a big part of it.

I agree.

i seem to recall somebody posting a few weeks ago that you can actually lose fat cells. cells die and are replaced. this includes fat cells. so, over time, after losing a lot of weight and maintaining the loss, you actually could get rid of the extra fat cells created while overweight. that poster said it took something like 5 years for all of your fat cells to be fully replaced as part of this normal process.

Not remotely trying to be snarky, this is an honest question. Does this mean that liposuction, not that I'm planning on getting it, actually is very good for long-term weight loss, because they remove actual fat cells?

seltzermint555

So much truth in this thread already.

I have been obese pretty much forever and I lost a large amount of weight just once before. At 23 I had a poisonous spider bite, had to go on steroids, couldn't walk for a couple of months, and then had my first major breakup. Due to all of that, I went from usual-for-me 240 lb to 299 lb. At 24, I went on a strict diet of diet cola, steamed rice, carrots, eggs, and the occasional Chick-Fil-A or Snickers bar. Like once a week. I lost 72 lb by the end of that year but I'd learned absolutely nothing about sustaining a healthy weight or lifestyle. The moment I started dating someone new who was obese with my similar (previous) unhealthy eating habits, I rocketed back to 240 and then stuck around 260-270 for years and years before getting even larger.

This time around, I started out with SMALL dietary changes and tons and tons of walking. Miles every night, or close to it. It took me several years to lose the first 45 lb. Then I found MFP and learned so much by tracking my intake. I expect to track my intake for the rest of my life. For me, it's too risky to stop logging and suddenly wake up 20+ pounds heavier and worse...I am committed to the change this time around.

FTR though I never did any serious diets or weight loss efforts in between the two times mentioned above. This time around it has taken me 4+ years but I have lost 113 lb.

mockchoc

It has nothing to do with "restrictions" in my opinion and rather has to do with a lack of focus on the long-term. People hit their goal and then rest on their laurels. They stop doing what they did to lose weight and instead fall back into their old habits. If you previously gained weight with those old habits, odds are you will gain weight again when you revert to your old ways. It's really as simple as that. It doesn't matter whether you ate pop tarts while losing weight or whether you ate whole foods while losing weight; it comes down to what you do at maintenance.

Yes, this. Done it over and over. Gosh I'm so over watching my weight. Luckily I've never really gotten big, no idea why though. I just go though stages of eating anything I want and then back on that stupid diet ...........so over it.

SoreTodayStrongTomorrow222

My attitude is this is my life style change to eat healthier and maintain exercise.

Any change in diet or exercise habits is a change in lifestyle. But, whether you call it a lifestyle change or a diet, it can still change again. It's rare for anyone not to have several lifestyle changes over the course of their life.

In fact, changes in lifestyle are often what cause people to gain weight. They get married, they have children, they get a sedentary job, they lose a job, they get an injury, etc.

those sound like excuses to me :-)

Excuses are reasons.

no - getting married, having kids - those are EXCUSES

an injury is a REASON

don't confuse the two

I'm not confusing anything. If the REASON you gain weight is that you got married and your lifestyle changed, that REASON is no more or less valid than injury. Neither MAKES you gain weight. It was always personal choice, no matter what the REASON you made the choice.

alright, well if you want to play word games go right ahead... getting married etc is not a good reason/excuse (whatever you want to call it) for gaining weight. Because your marital status changed, doesnt mean your lifesyle (as directly related to your health) has to change - if it does, and you say "its because i got married and my hubby doesnt like veggies and i have to clean the house abnd go grocery shopping and im so busy blah blah blah" <- that is an excuse.

bcattoes

Perhaps one reason is because you don't ever lose fat cells once they have been created, the cells just shrink with weight loss. Now, it takes less energy for cells to expand than to conduct mitosis and create new fat cells. So, once the cells have been created, or once you gain a significant amount of weight, you will always have those same fat cells from when you were bigger. The only way that I know of to remove fat cells is by surgery, which is dangerous and can damage your body.

Further reading: http://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20080505/fat-cells-slim-up-but-dont-ship-out

Yes!! This, too, is a big part of it.

I agree.

i seem to recall somebody posting a few weeks ago that you can actually lose fat cells. cells die and are replaced. this includes fat cells. so, over time, after losing a lot of weight and maintaining the loss, you actually could get rid of the extra fat cells created while overweight. that poster said it took something like 5 years for all of your fat cells to be fully replaced as part of this normal process.

Not remotely trying to be snarky, this is an honest question. Does this mean that liposuction, not that I'm planning on getting it, actually is very good for long-term weight loss, because they remove actual fat cells?

Yes, though I read not too long ago that people that use liposuction often have more internal (visceral) fat, which is the most dangerous for your health. Basically they suck out subcutaneous fat cells, which are the ones you can see, leaving the visceral cells to fill with fat and a diagnosis of fatty liver disease.

bcattoes

My attitude is this is my life style change to eat healthier and maintain exercise.

Any change in diet or exercise habits is a change in lifestyle. But, whether you call it a lifestyle change or a diet, it can still change again. It's rare for anyone not to have several lifestyle changes over the course of their life.

In fact, changes in lifestyle are often what cause people to gain weight. They get married, they have children, they get a sedentary job, they lose a job, they get an injury, etc.

those sound like excuses to me :-)

Excuses are reasons.

no - getting married, having kids - those are EXCUSES

an injury is a REASON

don't confuse the two

I'm not confusing anything. If the REASON you gain weight is that you got married and your lifestyle changed, that REASON is no more or less valid than injury. Neither MAKES you gain weight. It was always personal choice, no matter what the REASON you made the choice.

alright, well if you want to play word games go right ahead... getting married etc is not a good reason/excuse (whatever you want to call it) for gaining weight. Because your marital status changed, doesnt mean your lifesyle (as directly related to your health) has to change - if it does, and you say "its because i got married and my hubby doesnt like veggies and i have to clean the house abnd go grocery shopping and im so busy blah blah blah" <- that is an excuse.

"good" is opinion. And you thinking a reason isn't a good reason does not make any less a reason. In this context, there really isn't a whole lot of difference between excuse and reason. "My excuse for gaining weight". "My reason for gaining weight". It all just means "Why I chose to gain weight.'

CJisinShape

Because they "diet".

You know what one of the best predictors of weight gain over time is? You guessed it - having dieted at some point.

A person is better understanding the root causes of why they over eat and resolve that rather than weight, Weight is the symptom, not the cause.

This!

Yup.

in_the_stars

The number of linkurl:fat cells;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/54033/ in a person's body is determined during childhood and stays constant throughout life, with about 10 percent of fat cells dying and being replaced annually, according to study published in __Nature__ yesterday (May 4). Understanding the hitherto poorly characterized dynamics of fat cell production and turnover may help researchers target key processes in obesity and related diseases, such as diabetes. "We are generating quite a few fat cells," said linkurl:Kirsty Spalding,;http://www.narsad.org/research/grantee_lists/bios/yi2007spalding.html a biologist at Sweden's Karolinska Institute and first author on the study, "but it seems to be really tightly regulated." Spalding said that both the expansion of the fat cell population and the arrival at what will be the final number of fat cells, or linkurl:adipocytes,;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/daily/23356/ in the adult body occur at an earlier age in obese people.

Fatter people experience a period of rapid adipoctye production around age two and reach their adult number of fat cells when they are about 16.5 years old, she said. Lean people, however, recruit fat cells most rapidly at about age six, with their fat cell population reaching its adult size at about 18.5 years old. "The expansion is definitely going on at an earlier age in obese children and at an increased rate," Spalding said. The team of mostly Swedish researchers employed several methods to characterize adipoctye dynamics in the human body. To study how fat cell numbers differ in heftier or lighter people, Spalding and her team examined fat biopsies from about 680 lean and obese Swedish people. They found obese people can have as much as twice the number of adipocytes as do lean people. The researchers also followed 20 gastric bypass patients who lost weight after their operations. Over the course of two years, their fat cells shrunk in size, but the total number stayed constant.

To characterize the turnover of fat cells in adults, Spalding used a linkurl:^14^C dating method;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/15802/ she developed. The researchers measured the radioactive signature in the DNA of fat cells, and modeled adipocyte death and replacement by comparing fat samples from 35 adult liposuction or reconstructive surgery patients to existing ^14^C data gathered from children.

Spalding said that knowing about the turnover of fat cells could help develop future obesity treatments. She cautioned, however, that dramatic weight reduction will not result solely from some "magic pill," and will likely require reduced calorie intake and exercise. She next plans to elucidate fat cell population dynamics in people who are lean as children and becomes obese adults; a scenario not explored in her study. "I would imagine that they're going to have an increase in [adipoctye] number, but having said that, it seems to be extremely tightly regulated," she said. "It's really an open question."

cdcooper321

I totally agree. Because they DIET or try the new "fad weight loss". If it's not something you're going to do for the rest of your life dont do it! It'll be just a quick fix and then you'll be right back into your old issue because you never changed your habits. Diets DONT WORK.

RetiredAndLovingIt

bump

bcattoes

I totally agree. Because they DIET or try the new "fad weight loss". If it's not something you're going to do for the rest of your life dont do it! It'll be just a quick fix and then you'll be right back into your old issue because you never changed your habits. Diets DONT WORK.

Not always. I've lost and gained many times, and only once have I ever tried a structured "diet". The diet worked just fine and it was actually about 3 years after I quit it before I gained any weight.

vb4evr

One word in my case... Complacency

parkscs

I totally agree. Because they DIET or try the new "fad weight loss". If it's not something you're going to do for the rest of your life dont do it! It'll be just a quick fix and then you'll be right back into your old issue because you never changed your habits. Diets DONT WORK.

Not always. I've lost and gained many times, and only once have I ever tried a structured "diet". The diet worked just fine and it was actually about 3 years after I quit it before I gained any weight.

Personally I could care less whether people call it a "diet" or a "fad" or a "lifestyle change". What matters is what you do in the long-term and that you do SOMETHING in the long term. The notion that you can't use a diet to achieve certain results is just silly to me. A diet is merely a structured plan designed for weight loss and, as bcattoes said, they do work (of course they do). In other words, diets are tools you can use to achieve short-term goals. The trick is to not simply have short-term goals, but to have long-term goals as well and to pursue those goals.

The notion that:

If it's not something you're going to do for the rest of your life dont do it! It'll be just a quick fix and then you'll be right back into your old issue because you never changed your habits

is simply a fallacy.

pinkraynedropjacki

Listen to this

http://www45.zippyshare.com/v/91094233/file.html

enough said for motivation.

Ed98043

I read somewhere that something like 90% of people will gain back the weight they lost within 5 years. There are lots of factors in the "why" (obviously they consume too many calories for their lower weight and much of that is pleasure-seeking whether it be emotional or just because high-calorie food is awesome) but let's not forget the physiological ones: The body very much wants to gain back lost weight and employs multiple tactics to do so. Producing extra hunger hormones and slowing down the metabolic rate are the biggies. Keeping weight off is a daily struggle and people just crack.

I lost a lot of weight when I was 15 and kept it off for 20 years but it took constant effort and restriction. I look back to how I ate during that time (very sparingly, always hungry) and while I never want to get back to the state of mind that allowed me to do that - mostly self-hatred - I do have to admire my willpower. lol But I never got to point where a low weight was natural - I always had to fight. At some point I just got tired of it, stopped equating my waistline with my self-worth and slacked off. Then I gained 10 or so lbs a year (sooo easy to ignore and deny) until I found myself weighing 220 lbs.

krawhitham

I'll tell you my story:

I lost about 35 lbs in 2007 a couple years after graduating from college. I started working part-time for a couple years, got laid off, then got a full time job and was there for 3 years. Over the 4 or so years that I got laid off then started working full time (at an insanely stressful overly bearing job) so much had changed stress-wise in my life, I gained all the weight back and then some. In this time I didn't have time to track my food/calorie intake either.

Stress. Not being able to manage enormous changes in my life, especially being laid off with no income and then a full time job that was so stressful the turnover of people quitting was ridiculous.

Now I have about a total of 45 to lose and I understand my triggers: mainly stress. Going forward I will not ever allow a job, relationship or otherwise to bring so much stress into my life that I neglect my own health. I will set aside an hour every day for exercise and my own well being, and I'll continue to track my foods forever, probably.

Bringing my health and well being to the forefront of my life for the rest of my life is the only thing that will prevent me from gaining the weight back. Other things, like having a wildly successful career and getting a huge salary are things I'm willing to sacrifice for this.

rybo

Because they "diet".

You know what one of the best predictors of weight gain over time is? You guessed it - having dieted at some point.

A person is better understanding the root causes of why they over eat and resolve that rather than weight, Weight is the symptom, not the cause.

I'm not sure truer words have ever been written on this site.

lisalsd1

Here's what I've seen with the people that I know who have lost and regained...

People go on a diet and view it as temporary dietary changes.

People join a gym, do the bare minimum....and use it on a temporary basis.

Weight loss is viewed as a single, one-time goal. People lose the amount of desired weight, achieve their goal...and then slip back into old habits, which caused the weight gain in the first place...and then cause the regain.

Weight loss may be a one-time event, BUT a healthy lifestyle is for the long haul.

Supadoopafly

The same reason broke people who win the lottery sometimes blow through all their money and end up broke again. Being broke wasn't their real problem. The reason they were broke was. Same with weight usually. Being overweight is a symptom. Not the actual problem.

^In a nutshell^.

QFT

sandi117

I believe it's mainly because people diet instead of adopt a new fitness lifestyle and develop a healthier relationship with food, or they develop habits that they cannot maintain long-term. (I'm sure that's been said many times already.)