Starting gaining weight back :(

MindyG150

I feel like I lost, gained, and lost again the same 4 pounds this month alone! Just get back on the right path and start moving!

cool_caz

a wise person said to me just a few days ago "...you can slow down but just don't stop". I apply that to everything now.
We all get stumped, sometimes complacent, sometimes lose interest and sometimes start thinking we can't keep this up. But we can and we do and we keep going!

louised88

This has definitely happened to me, I lost all the weight I wanted to and then I gained all of it back. I started my journey to lose it all again in January, and I'm about half way to where I want to be again.
I'm not sure what your diet is like, but with me the reason I gained all my weight back was because my diet wasn't something I could stick with. In January, I started to pay attention to myself. I was striving for a diet that could allow me to lose weight, but wasn't making me miss out on anything that I loved. Moderation is key, but one big thing that has changed for me are my connotations to food. I don't look at fast food the same anymore. I feel extremely guilty and gross after I eat it, same with junk food or anything generally unhealthy. Even without changing the connotations to food though, strive for a healthier lifestyle you can stick with. Start making simple changes that will lead to a bigger change. With me, I started with the flour I was using. I make almost everything homemade, by the way. Then, I cut out refined sugars. Next, I moderated my dairy intake - cheese was a main ingredient in all my foods, and that needed to stop. After that, I added more fruits and veggies to my diet. Now I'm focusing on cutting out meats, and adding more protein rich meat substitutions. I don't want to be completely vegetarian, but I find that I go over my protein, fat, and calorie intake a lot quicker with actual meats than I would if I were eating vegetarian substitutions. The changes I've gradually made have changed the way I look at food. I garden also, and the cost of food has made an impact on what I eat. A dollar cheeseburger might feed me for a meal, but that dollar could go toward something else that could last longer - such as a packet of seeds to grow tons more food, for example. What your stomach can handle will change too, but that change is the hardest in my opinion. I use to be able to eat ample amount of food, but now one little 200 calorie healthy snack makes me feel really full, and can get me through a few hours of the day instead of just ten minutes like before I started dieting. My cravings and reactions to food have changed as well. Eventually, I strive for a general healthy lifestyle, and I'm getting there.

Hope this helps

I love stories like these, I find them really inspiring! Thank you!

clowdusc

This has definitely happened to me, I lost all the weight I wanted to and then I gained all of it back. I started my journey to lose it all again in January, and I'm about half way to where I want to be again.
I'm not sure what your diet is like, but with me the reason I gained all my weight back was because my diet wasn't something I could stick with. In January, I started to pay attention to myself. I was striving for a diet that could allow me to lose weight, but wasn't making me miss out on anything that I loved. Moderation is key, but one big thing that has changed for me are my connotations to food. I don't look at fast food the same anymore. I feel extremely guilty and gross after I eat it, same with junk food or anything generally unhealthy. Even without changing the connotations to food though, strive for a healthier lifestyle you can stick with. Start making simple changes that will lead to a bigger change. With me, I started with the flour I was using. I make almost everything homemade, by the way. Then, I cut out refined sugars. Next, I moderated my dairy intake - cheese was a main ingredient in all my foods, and that needed to stop. After that, I added more fruits and veggies to my diet. Now I'm focusing on cutting out meats, and adding more protein rich meat substitutions. I don't want to be completely vegetarian, but I find that I go over my protein, fat, and calorie intake a lot quicker with actual meats than I would if I were eating vegetarian substitutions. The changes I've gradually made have changed the way I look at food. I garden also, and the cost of food has made an impact on what I eat. A dollar cheeseburger might feed me for a meal, but that dollar could go toward something else that could last longer - such as a packet of seeds to grow tons more food, for example. What your stomach can handle will change too, but that change is the hardest in my opinion. I use to be able to eat ample amount of food, but now one little 200 calorie healthy snack makes me feel really full, and can get me through a few hours of the day instead of just ten minutes like before I started dieting. My cravings and reactions to food have changed as well. Eventually, I strive for a general healthy lifestyle, and I'm getting there.

Hope this helps

I love stories like these, I find them really inspiring! Thank you!

You're very welcome Let me know if you need any more advice

joannbrunton

My situation has been pretty similar. I spent the first few weeks here with scale barely moving. Then it dropped quickly, so that by the end of 10 weeks I had lost 14 lbs. (a bit faster than was my goal). A week after having a great weigh-in (I only weigh myself once a week, same time, same day), I was back up four pounds. This week, I had lost those four and am back to where I was two weeks ago.

It was depressing to see little movement or even reversals. But I'm also having a change of attitude. I'm paying less attention to the scale and more attention to changing habits and NSVs (non-scale victories). So while the scale hasn't been my constant friend, I have gone down a pant size and have started wearing a shirt that months ago I couldn't wear (for fear of bursting the buttons). NSV! I was a competitive swimmer when I was 6 through 18, but have never been able to get back into the pool in any sustained way since then. Yesterday, however, I completed the 5th week of an 8-week training program on Speedo Pace Club and I'm now swimming consistently and for twice the distance I had done at any point in the last 30 years. NSV! When tired I have always been drawn to bad snacking--chips and such--but now my snacks and my meals are mostly whole (not processed) foods that I prepare myself, with lots of vegetables and fruits of a wider variety than ever before. NSV!

In the past, when I heard that a safe pace to lose weight was about 1 lb. per week, I would feel depressed because while I was confident that I could sustain that through bouts of exercise over a period of two months or so, I was not at all sure that I could do it for longer. Eventually stresses in life and work would reassert their hold on me and I'd revert to bad habits. Durable weight loss seemed out of reach.

I began this with a goal of losing 50 lbs. by my 50th birthday (42 lbs. to go in 51 weeks). Now my goal with MFP (and a couple of other sites/apps I use) is to fundamentally and permanently change my lifestyle for the better. Using MFP helps me make very conscious decisions for health and fitness. My positive reinforcement doesn't come from the scale, it comes from reflecting on a day in which I made good decisions. For example, I had some errands to run in town and I did them on my bike rather than by car. That's a positive change! The foods I eat now are more healthy and, frankly, more tasty and more interesting. That's a positive change. My sons want to go to the beach! Let's go (and I'll ride the waves longer than they will)! That's a positive change. Family sitting around on a Saturday morning? I mobilize them to hop on their bikes and go with me to the local farmer's market where one son surprises a nearby woman by calling out to me, "This purslane tastes great! It would be awesome in a stir-fry with broccoli! And it has logs of omega-3!" That's a positive change!

My feeling now is that whatever the oscillations of the scale in the short term, if I change my lifestyle for the long run, the scale will eventually take care of itself. So I look for my positive reinforcements from daily life. I make a small change, stick with it, then add another. I find a category of change (food, for example) and play with it and challenge myself.

So as others have said in other threads, the scale is, more often than not, a source of frustration rather than positive feedback. I'd like to see a different kind of timeline available for those of us who are trying to lose weight without a destructive emphasis on lbs/kg/stones. I'd like a scale reflecting positive sustainable life changes.