Why do people gain all their weight back so often?

I became depressed, stopped caring about everything, especially myself and gained all the weight back.

Because I think that some (not all, don't slate/hate me!) people go on a "diet", which ends once their weight is down. To keep the weight off people need to make permanent lifestyle changes - if it's having fruit instead of cookies, or walking up the stairs instead of taking the lift, etc etc.

Most likely because we go back to overeating and quit monitoring.
Keeping track of my weight and food intake has to be my new way of life, if I don't want to go back to the way I was

There is some fairly strong science to back up the theory that every body becomes tuned to what the weight has been for a stretch of time and sees this as the "correct weight" or equilibrium, even if this weight is too heavy or too thin. If you are trying to lose weight after being heavy your body will go into a panic mode and become more efficient. Slow and low is the way to go. There is a similar phenomenon with anorexia, the patient needs to eat immense calories in order to put on minuscule amounts of weight.

Basically the human body and metabolism is a very difficult ship to turn around, talking in terms of months for sure, possibly years. Our bodies are creatures of habit and want to go back to the most recent known point. So the best method is to lose weight without calorie deprivation (just clean and mindful eating), shooting for only a pound or two a month of loss to prevent the body from compensating by becoming more calorie efficient. This method takes longer and doesn't make for good sound bites or TV, but has better long term success.

I'm (anecdotal) proof that the ship can be turned... It's just a long process.

In my mid 20's, I was supposedly "set" at 260-270lb (globs of those impossibly persistent fat cells and all). Then got a little stuck at 180-190 lbs for most of my 30s. Now I'm working on programming my body to be happy at 150-160 lbs. I'm having reasonably good success with this. It just requires time.

Apparently there's no way to delete a post?

Its cause people normally go on drastic diets that longterm arent healthy and they cant keep it up, they eat normally again hence they gain the weight back again

I yo-yo. It had nothing to do with health issues, or babies, or not understanding the difference between "diet" and "lifestyle change". I've maintained at a healthy weight for 2, 4, 8 years at a time before gaining again.

Why do I regain? Because Every. Single. Goddamn. Day. is a struggle. Every day, I want homemade buttermilk waffles with fresh butter and syrup. Every day, I want a cheeseburger, 2 beers, and some cookies. Every single day, every single workout, I would rather be sitting on the couch watching a movie. It just gets exhausting after a while, driving home from work, thinking about the sad little healthy meal I have prepared. No matter how tasty it is, it is NOT fried chicken and cornbread. It is NOT a Peanut Buster Parfait(TM). Every meal, every snack is a battle I have with myself. Every visit to the gym happens because I've spent 15 minutes arguing with myself about why I should go instead of hanging out with my husband and pets, or instead of going out with friends, or instead of practicing guitar or playing games or any one of the zillion things I'd rather do than go get sweaty.

I often debate - is being unhappy because I'm overweight better or worse than being unhappy because I'm not really enjoying food and alcohol except for once a week? (If I didn't have a weekly cheat meal, I'd lose my mind).

It's completely exhausting. I've been in maintenance for 8 months this time through. How long will I make it before I just say, "$%^# it, this sucks", and start enjoying the rest of my life again? Time will tell.

Preach, girl! I couldn't have said it any better myself. This is why I regained after 20 years of maintaining, and this is why I haven't lost much over the past year. I'm not an emotional eater, I don't have hormone problems, or babies, or a spouse that buys junk food, or really any excuse at all. The bottom line is that eating big food and sitting on my butt is pleasant and easy, and losing weight (and maintaining) is hard and sucks. And then when you find out that being slim is not the be-all, end-all answer to happiness in life...it's very tempting to ask "Why am I doing this, again?".

I think it has to be a permanent lifestyle change, behavior modification, education, and the ability to keep a close eye on yourself and keep from slacking off. At least that's what I'm hoping for myself.

For example, up until about six years ago I rarely cooked. My refrigerator would be empty except for some yogurt and maybe grapes, and I had frozen meals in the freezer, or else I ate out. When I moved out of my apartment, I didn't really even need to clean the stove or oven because I never used them. Then I started becoming interested in nutrition, and decided to try cooking more meals from scratch. Now, six years later, I don't have any frozen or canned foods in my house. I make almost everything from scratch and I'm not even tempted by the convenience of frozen meals any more because I don't like the laundry list of questionable ingredients in a lot of them.

So now I'm working on eating less of my homecooked food, allowing myself Starbucks once a week instead of four times a week, etc. I'm hoping that as I slowly get used to these new habits they will become more second nature and it won't always be such a struggle.

Over the past few years I've watched several of my co-workers go through the lose/gain cycle. (Weight Watchers, Xyngular, Nutri-system, Medifast, etc) Lose 20 lbs, gain back 25. Lose 25, gain 30 etc. They keep trying different diets, and then just go back to their regular eating habits. They never take the time to educate themselves on nutrition or try to come up with a sustainable eating plan that they can live with.

I did that. I lost 125 pounds very long ago. I kept it off for 10 years which I have heard is pretty unusual. I gained back only a third of the weight. Now I understand that for me I needed a change of the basic way I thought about keeping it off.

It involves a permanent change in the way I felt about food. This new way of eating has to be Your New Way Forever! Not just until you reach a goal and then it's ANYTHING GOES.

I let my self control just crumble and with each added pound my new self faded back into history!!!

I won't let that happen again. I'm going to make permanent changes and keep them for life.

bumping to read later