I made goal!! And celebrated by gaining 80 lbs.

Chronic relapsed here, too. In the last 4 years I've gone from 240 to 210 to 240 to 210 to now 270! With lots of smaller ups and downs in between.

Whenever I'd reach a low, I'd feel good about myself, and just want a break from having to try. Just wanted to eat what everyone else was eating and not worry.

Those days are over, the new you's journey starts NOW!

Feel free to add friend if desired.

I didn't make it to goal, I'd only lost 50, before deciding to maintain through a stressful patch.... well, that stressful patch turned into almost 2 years, and maintaining turned into gaining that 50 back, plus 30 for good measure.

Today, I got to celebrate getting rid of that additional 30, and I'm now back to my initial start weight when I decided to lose back in March of 2011 before I got married. :-|

I relapsed too, this is my second go at MFP (only a couple days in) the first time I lost 16 pounds, didn't really notice a change in my body and got discouraged and quit. I gained it all back, plus another 10. Ugh, why can't it be easy to lose weight??
Anyways, best of luck on your journey

I know the feeling. I lost 90 pounds and have gained back 35. It really sucks. I managed to lose the 35 and then put it back on. Just started tracking my food again this week so here's to trying again. If I manage to stick with this and lose these 35 lbs, I am going to do whatever it takes to not put them back on again because it is a miserable spot to be in. I feel like a fat failure.

Hello Fellow relapser. I lost about 20 lbs with MFP last November when I just said "f it" and when AWOL.
I am back and determined to lose 40-50 lbs and get fit.

Please feel free to friend me.

Why do I get the feeling after reading all these great posts that this is like an Alcoholics Anonymous board? And that's not to say its a BAD thing at all. Some of us do have an addiction and/or unhealthy relationship or approaches to food. The only thing we really can do is simply stay consistent with what works. An alcoholic doesn't go to a bar to celebrate sobriety (unless you are from my family which is a different story...) I haven't "relapsed" significantly but would bounce around before MFP without significant results. I do not see myself ever NOT logging my food again. Even if I hit a weight goal or something similar, why quit what works? DON'T! Your food intake changes, true. However think about it, whenever you have lost weight over a time period you had to change your eating patterns and intake as you went along, but what remained constant throughout the weight loss was simply logging.

We are all going to bounce around a bit, and that's fine. Just log. If its a bad day, oh well but log it!

Thanks for sharing. We all have an excuse! I got a new knee after losing 36 pounds. Yep, I celebrate by putting it all back on. I focused on exercise and am getting around better than ever but my weight is at a high. So I am back mfp! Cant wait to be 275 and exercise. Might get to go on an elk hunt with my son.

I lost 50 and gained 70 im back at it again too with MUCH to lose. I sent u a request

I know this sounds crazy, but how do you save a message board that you join so you can easily find it? I am getting SO confused. I did this site about 2 years ago and don't remember it being a challenge. However, I cannot figure out how to add my food, exercise, or save a message board since this is my first try. HELP...........please. I feel so goofy about not understanding what is going on.

hmmmm...go to the top of your browser (mine is Chrome) There's a little house icon at top left.
see the long www.myfitness.......etc?

drag that down to your saved links bar (it's the line right below the little house)

Then click on that and it shoud take you to your post in here each time

Thanks, AtlantaBob, for the tech help. I have done fine since Monday getting my eating under control. I cannot seem to motivate myself to exercise. I KNOW that it is a very important part of weight loss. I have a lot of issues w/spine arthritis and bulging disks. About a year ago I did yoga for about 4 months and it helped a lot w/weight loss and pain. I was pretty much pain free during that period but since I haven't been working the cost was not in the budget. I am going to have to work something out because I LOVED it, it helped my back, and it also felt good to leave the studio w/a since of accomplishment.

I'm with ya. I lost about 75 in a pretty quick time - about 7 months. Eating at a deficit and running and lifting. That was in 2010. Around the start of 2011, I began putting it back on - pretty slowly at first. But, by 2014 I was back up about 50 of those 75 pounds. The only thing that kept me from putting all of the weight back on (and maybe more) was that I kept running. So, here I am again. I restarted for the final time last Monday. I've taken off 7 of those pounds. Again, doing what worked in the past - eat less than I have been and continue to run and now I'm starting back at the gym to lift.
I've got races in the fall/winter and I'm tired of being "the fat guy that runs a lot".

I LOVED your statement about restarting for the final time. I think I will make that my mantra while I go on this journey for the last time. It wasn't even that enjoyable gaining my weight back now that I think of it. I am glad I found this group to work with on this. Right now it is easy because I am so refocused. I KNOW that will not last. I have an easy time of convincing myself "it won't hurt just this once", lol, so I must find something distracting when the "attack" comes, I will be ready for that enemy in my mind.

I hate to tell you this, guys, but the key to avoiding regain is to eat nutrient-dense, high fiber food (think veggies and fruits). I have been on my current program for about 4 years and have not regained an ounce (and I have spent a fair bit of time in "maintenance" during that time). This is a first for me. The usual pattern for me was diet, regain more than I had lost, diet again, regain even more, etc. WHAT you eat while losing matters a lot for avoiding regain. If you enter "maintenance" with nutrient deficits (tough to do if you are just eating less of the same junk that put the pounds on you) you will put it all back on--plus some. Remember that it only takes 100 extra calories per day (a large chocolate chip cookie) over what you are burning, to regain in the neighborhood of 25 pounds in a year. When you eat nutrient-dense food, you will naturally follow your calorie output--it's kind of magic. When you eat sugar and white flour, there is a lot in those essentially empty calories that overwhelm the body's ability to maintain body fat at a set point. There is a lot of newer dietary research into the bio-chemistry of obesity that, if anyone is interested, I could cite (but it would take a while to retrieve).

One of the things I noticed about the food diaries of morbidly obese women whom I have counseled is that their diets consisted almost entirely of bad fats (think french fries and fried chicken) and sugary, white flour foods along with salty snacks with very little food value. They also drank gallons of soda pop and ate whole half-gallons of ice cream. There would be not one piece of fresh fruit and rarely a vegetable (does ketchup count as a vegetable?). It was a no-brainer to figure that doing the opposite might help one to gradually reduce and then maintain that loss. And so it has.

I used to think that just counting calories was the way to go "so that I do not feel deprived" but you really must have an iron will to keep on measuring and weighing day after day, stretching far into the future. Retraining one's eating habits means that I actually prefer the way I eat now. One of the things that had to happen though was that I had to break my addiction to "bad" food. (There truly is no "bad" food but there is food that is bad to eat--on a regular basis--for people who are interested in promoting their health.) Our sedentary lifestyles (and as one ages, everyone has a growing tendency to be sedentary) mean that we must make every calorie count toward health.

I lost 76 pounds and gained back... I don't know... 60-70? Anyway, I'm back, trying this again. 25 pounds down so far.

I just readjusted my MFP weight to my today weight. I lost 51 lbs (don't forget the 1) and I have since gained 20 so here I am again relosing and hopefully some extra.