Those who gained back...

My thyroid sucks..

I quit smoking and didn't care if I gained weight at the time.

Now to get back to my goal and stay there!

I am an addict and when I gave up the real bad stuff I took up food....it became my friend...I used Smarties to quit cigarettes (almost 8 years ago) and then just kind of adopted food as the comfort, the fix, the new addiction. A "justifiable" fix! So 120 lbs. later I went on here over a year ago and lost 35 pounds! Then we had 2 losses in the family, and I needed the "drug" again. Well, 40 pounds came back, so here we are again. At least I know it works, tried and true. The key is the mindset and recognizing that eating the food is the symptom, not the problem. As any addiction. I need to dig down deep and address the issues that lead me to need a "vice". But now high blood pressure and health concerns come into play, so its time....it's a choice and only I can make it for me. I want to be able to tie my shoes again.....Good Luck and God Bless....

My busy season with work is around the holidays, which means more time at my desk, less time for workouts, being lazy about tracking and eating way too much junk. I've only gained a few pounds back and as much as it sucks, at least I recognize what I need to change before it goes much further and I'm getting back on track.

In my teens I lost 70lbs in a little over a year by joining weight watchers. It was great, I was eating healthily and exercising. Then my dad got sick and I helped looked after him. I gained it all back and then some through binging.

In my twenties I lost 70lbs again in a little over a year through seeing a nutritionist. It was great, I ate lots of food, exercised and felt much better about myself. I could see my collar bones for the first time in my life, I did a mini marathon and lots of travelling. I dropped lots of dress sizes. Then I got depressed and gained back all the weight in six months through binging. I've been depressed over five years now, and I've gained an average of 28lbs every year.

I've been thinking about it a lot recently, While I understand now that I have an unhealthy relationship with food and using it to manage my emotions, I can't lay all the blame on that for why I gained back the weight. I think I also got tired. Both times I'd worked really hard and even though I'd lost lots of weight, I still looked fat. I still wasn't pretty or happy with other areas of my life. Weight loss hadn't been the answer to all my problems, so I gave up the fight.

Now I'm trying MFP. I'm hopeful that with this new insight I will be successful this time. I'm taking it one day at a time and doing it for what it is - weight loss. I want to be able to move around easier, take care of my invalid mum better and have more fun with my dog. I'm going to be really careful when I get to about 15 months in and eat at maintenance for a while if I have to - anything to beat the pattern. I know I'll have to watch what I eat for the rest of my life. As someone who has been obese her whole life, I know the odds are against me, but if I can get to goal and keep there, I'm very happy to log everything I eat for the rest of my life.

Good luck losing weight and keeping it off!

My ex was about as motivating as a wet sponge, he had no support for me changing and instead would constantly whine and whine and whine about me exercising or eating less or even reading the calories off the back of the packets.. he would try to sabotage me bringing chocolate and sweets home practically every few days so that id be tempted to eat them so much so that eventually i just gave up and as sure as eggs are eggs the weight came back too....

Now I have kicked his *kitten* to the curb and i'm doing this for me, my future my life..i am the only one that can create my destiny...

MFP is an amazing site full of fun, sweet motivating people...one step at a time we will get to our goals,,,,

~Charlie

For me it was that I faced an extremely difficult situation in my personal life which lasted an entire year, and during that same year I had a constant, unavoidable environment of temptation with all of my biggest problem foods constantly being not only offered to me, but pushed on me. At first I resisted most of the time, but as the year wore on my resolve weakened, and by the the six month mark I'd given up completely, thrown caution to the wind and just figured I'd try again when the situation was resolved.

In retrospect, I should have kept trying and doing my best, because even if I'd gained some, I wouldn't have gained back as much as I did and wouldn't have had to start completely over.

I have accepted that what I am doing to lose will have to continue in some fashion for the rest of my life if I want to maintain. I may not log every day for the rest of my life, but I know that if I want to maintain then at the very least I'll have to weigh myself weekly and go back to logging whenever the scale starts to inch its way up, and I may just continue to log daily from here on out.

I know that while I may be able to cut down on the length of workouts eventually, I will still need to keep working out daily for the rest of my life if I am to maintain, and chances are I will continue with the length as well if I possibly can.

I fell in love and moved in with a man, doomed

Lol isn't that the truth?

Falling back into old habits, and not changing my mindset when I was losing. I saw the losing phase as a "diet" that had an end date, when I could get back to "normal". "Normal" was how I got fat in the first place.

Learning to maintain begins the day you decide to start losing. It's a challenge in and of itself.

i'll remember this, thank you

...why did you?

My goal is far, but looking to learn now to avoid a similar fate down the road.

For me it was a combination of things:

1 - I didn't realize it until I'd lost the weight, but I had this expectation that hitting my goal weight was going to fix other issues in my life. Instead I found that losing the weight took away the excuse I'd always given myself for those other things not being what I wanted. It was frustrating and demoralizing and I'm an emotional eater.

2 - Though I knew that this was going to have to be a lifestyle change for me, it was still difficult to hang around friends who could eat whatever they wanted either because they never seemed to gain weight or they were perfectly happy being overweight. It didn't seem fair and it was frustrating for me.

3 - I also stopped planning ahead and had lots of free time where I didn't do anything. Both of those are a recipe for binging for me.

But this was all in my head kind of stuff so I just had to be really honest with myself and confront some issues I'd been avoiding. My solutions were to realize that losing weight is not a magical remedy that makes your life perfect. It just makes you healthier. And I've started arranging time with my friends doing things that aren't centered around food - hiking, movies (where I can use my budget as an excuse for not snacking), museums, walks around town, etc... I've gone back to planning my meals for each week and have lists of things to accomplish each weekend to keep myself busy so I won't snack as much.

Maintenance can get frustrating because without that weight loss goal to focus on anymore, you may wonder why you are still doing it. But I got a great motto for myself now that a friend uses and I'm going to start using once I go into maintenance. "I don't workout so I can lose weight. I workout so I can eat." It may just be a matter of finding that motto or goal for yourself to help keep you motivated once you are no longer having to check a scale.