Why do people gain all their weight back so often?

I couldn't agree more tennisdude...separating the emotional connection is the toughest part for me. I lost 50 and have put 30 back on over three years. I stopped paying attention to portion sizes and tend to stress eat. I am back on track before I gained all back, but I had kept it off for 3 years before packing it back on. Very tough indeed, if it were not we wouldn't need this website or each others support.

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

Being pregnant,giving birth are huge events in the body that do a lot of damage that takes time to heal as well as hormonal changes that affect you. So....

Actually, they are all excuses. Since the calorie deficit is what is required for weight loss, any excuse to not eat at a deficit is just that, an excuse. Not being able to exercise doesn't mean you have to gain weight, it just means you can't increase your calorie deficit and/or work on fitness. There is a difference between fitness and weight loss.

What is the difference between an excuse not to control weight and a reason not to control weight?

A reason is something out of your control that prevents you from the correct behavior (as in, the reason I don't work out is because I have a broken leg). An excuse is something that is within your control that you use to rationalize your decision not to do it (I'm not working out today because I'm tired).

Choosing to eat too much and blaming it on other things as if those things distract you from eating less is using them as excuses. They aren't valid reasons.

The broken leg would not prevent you from eating less and controling your weight anymore than a distraction.

Given your description the only reason to gain weight would be forced feeding. But it seems more opinion than actual defintion of the word 'reason'. You see a reason as invalid so you call it an excuse. But that's not what those words mean.

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

Being pregnant,giving birth are huge events in the body that do a lot of damage that takes time to heal as well as hormonal changes that affect you. So....

Actually, they are all excuses. Since the calorie deficit is what is required for weight loss, any excuse to not eat at a deficit is just that, an excuse. Not being able to exercise doesn't mean you have to gain weight, it just means you can't increase your calorie deficit and/or work on fitness. There is a difference between fitness and weight loss.

What is the difference between an excuse not to control weight and a reason not to control weight?

A reason is something out of your control that prevents you from the correct behavior (as in, the reason I don't work out is because I have a broken leg). An excuse is something that is within your control that you use to rationalize your decision not to do it (I'm not working out today because I'm tired).

Choosing to eat too much and blaming it on other things as if those things distract you from eating less is using them as excuses. They aren't valid reasons.

The broken leg would not prevent you from eating less and controling your weight anymore than a distraction.

Given your description the only reason to gain weight would be forced feeding. But it seems more opinion than actual defintion of the word 'reason'. You see a reason as invalid so you call it an excuse. But that's not what those words mean.

You need to work on reading things in context. I used both the broken leg and the tiredness as a person's reason or excuse to not exercise.
Given any description, the only reason anyone gains weight is overeating. Eating at a calorie surplus. that's physics. You can rationalize it however you want, but you said yourself your marriage distracted you from your goals and you overate.

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

Being pregnant,giving birth are huge events in the body that do a lot of damage that takes time to heal as well as hormonal changes that affect you. So....

Actually, they are all excuses. Since the calorie deficit is what is required for weight loss, any excuse to not eat at a deficit is just that, an excuse. Not being able to exercise doesn't mean you have to gain weight, it just means you can't increase your calorie deficit and/or work on fitness. There is a difference between fitness and weight loss.

What is the difference between an excuse not to control weight and a reason not to control weight?

A reason is something out of your control that prevents you from the correct behavior (as in, the reason I don't work out is because I have a broken leg). An excuse is something that is within your control that you use to rationalize your decision not to do it (I'm not working out today because I'm tired).

Choosing to eat too much and blaming it on other things as if those things distract you from eating less is using them as excuses. They aren't valid reasons.

The broken leg would not prevent you from eating less and controling your weight anymore than a distraction.

Given your description the only reason to gain weight would be forced feeding. But it seems more opinion than actual defintion of the word 'reason'. You see a reason as invalid so you call it an excuse. But that's not what those words mean.

You need to work on reading things in context. I used both the broken leg and the tiredness as a person's reason or excuse to not exercise.
Given any description, the only reason anyone gains weight is overeating. Eating at a calorie surplus. that's physics. You can rationalize it however you want, but you said yourself your marriage distracted you from your goals and you overate.

Reason for gaining weight, I chose to eat calorie surplus, agreed. Reason for the choice was marriage. It's not a choice I regret so I have no need for excuses.

I think we all wish we were that trim person that doesn't have to worry about what they eat or weighing themselves, and when we get to our goal weight we pretend to be that person for a while, or maybe think that we became that person by losing the weight.

The reality is, we had to work really hard to get there, and still need to put in the effort to maintain it. I just don't have the metabolism to go around eating whatever I want... I wish I did, but I don't! And I don't think I realized that until I gained back half of the weight I'd lost (around the time that I signed up for MFP again this time last year lol)

Its because people think of MFP as a diet instead of a lifestyle change.

This!

And obviously this is reflected in the statistics that 95% of people will regain all weight lost (often more) within five years of the initial loss. I assume this percentage gets closer to 100% the longer you are monitoring people for.

More recent studies I've read suggest it's more like 80% failure in long-term weight loss, not 95% and approaching 100% over time. You aren't looking at great odds with a 1 in 5 success rate, but it's not nearly as bleak as you're making it out to be. Regardless of what the statistics indicate though, there is no hard limit on how many people can succeed and it's 100% up to you as an individual whether you succeed or fail.

Do you have any links for those figures? Would like to read these latest studies as everything I've seen does indeed paint a bleak picture. Also just to explain further - even if 20% can keep the weight off long term (defined here as longer than five years) the 80% who regain their weight are much more likely to increase beyond whatever their starting weight was (i.e. regain all they lost, plus extra). Obviously this becomes a compounding issue over the years of successive losses/gains. Also the health problems associated with weight loss and weight gain are really serious (arguably more so than being overweight and maintaining that size throughout your life).

Also I don't really think you can dichotomise health into "success" and "failure". There are varying degrees of both, and most people can only sustain a middle ground for their whole life.

ETA: I think a previous commenter is right that lower figures will include people who continually gain and lose the same 20kg, for example. So follow up monitoring might record them when they're on the losing streak and ignore that they are regaining that weight constantly.

Probably because at some point they stop counting calories.

During the restrictive portion control style diet, they have still been eating the same sort of foods they would have been when they weren't counting calories.

Rather than try and change the types of food they eat, which will better control the hormones in their bodies, which in turn will control the cravings, they've just struggle through eating less of the (Moorish stuff).

When they stop the counting, they consume more calories and the weight goes back on.



I love food, I like the way it tastes and the way it makes me feel - but at the end of the day it's fuel for our bodies, pure and simple.

You can still get enjoyment out of eating a more limited range of food, but get past the emotional connection and you've cracked it.

Cracking by the way is the hard part!!!

This is me! everything he just said is me! except for the cracking the emotional connection to food. haven't done that yet. Plus the Minute I stop counting calories I wake up and I have put back on 20 pounds I just lost. We all know it comes on a whole lot faster then it comes off. I am trying now to focus on true hunger as apposed to wanting to eat something.

Because the BLERCH demands it! DUH!

This. I let my focus get distracted and the blerch won.

I am not going to make excuses, I am going to state exactly what happened to me, no value judgement, just facts. May of 2012 I was down to 145lbs. I had never in my adult life ( like since I was twelve) weighed that little. Summer I went out on a lot of first dates, ate and drank and put moderation on the back burner. I was celebrating how much differently everyone was treating me. Even knowing that 90+% of people regain their lost weight, and that my metabolism may be slower than someone who had always been small, I let caution and monitoring fall by the wayside. When I got back home to my scale I was up to 160 again. No biggie, I thought, I'll just start exercising and eating right again and it'll come back off. Then I started medical school.

Turns out, after not being in school for a bunch of years I sucked at time management. For the first six months I barely had time to bathe let alone exercise and that is no one's fault but mine. Also about that time I found a lump in my neck. My hair started falling out. I started to get weird bruises all over my body. I was cold all the time. I had to take a nap in the afternoon because I was just so mentally and physically fatigued. It was all I could do to keep my grades up.

Fast forward to November 2013. I am back up to 200lbs - still under where I started - and we finally get to learning about endocrine disorders at school. I felt like I was slapped in the face with a big old "of course you dummy" sign. I ended up getting a bunch of testing and blood work and about a month ago I finally got diagnosed with Hashimoto's Thyroiditis, an auto immune disorder that attacks and destroys your thyroid gland over time. Now I am on levothyroxine replacement and am starting to grow my hair back and can actually stay awake through a 16hour day with workouts.

I am not making an excuse for my self. I relaxed my eating, decreased my activity level and increased my stress. That alone would have precipitated weight gain. The thyroid issues just make it that much harder to achieve the appropriate food/activity balance.

Never again though. This bull is bull. Stupid lazy blerch.

I really believe tracking every last thing that we put in our mouth. Being totally honest about it. I find if I go over one day because I just didn't care that day, but I track everything, the next morning when I look back at what I did I find myself saying "ok girl you can't do that two days in a row, you will behave today", and I do.