Breaking the Regain Cycle

robingmurphy · December 2017

Apparently I'm a slow learner because I have had to re-learn the same lesson many times over my life. I have been living this pattern over and over since I was perhaps 20:

1) Get frustrated because my weight increases and hits a point where I don't feel good about how I look or in my body ... that's generally when I'm approaching the "overweight" category.

2) Spend months, sometimes years, complaining about feeling fat and not loving how I look. I'll try every trick in the book that has been shown to help someone lose weight (What if I cut out snacks?, What if I start every lunch and dinner with soup?, What if I cut bread out of my diet? What if I try to exercise a little more? What if I read every book about intuitive eating? What if I try to avoid sugar completely?) I do all of those in rotation and naturally none of them sticks and naturally none of them helps me lose much or any weight. I look in horror at my weight chart which shows a slow and steady incline over the past months or years.

3) Eventually I realize that if I don't want to be overweight, I'm going to have to buckle down and do something about it. I recognize that counting calories has been the only way I've lost weight in the past. For some reason, I'm really resistant to doing that again. It seems like a lot of work. I've spent months and months (sometimes years) avoiding doing that.

4) Finally, I realize I want to feel happy in my body and like how I look, so I decide to just do it. I start logging in MyFitnessPal. I pick an easy goal like 1/2 lb a week because I'm sure it will be super hard to stick to that.

5) The first day or two is kinda hard. I realize I've been eating a lot of calories in things that I don't really care about, and I eliminate them or switch them for low cal versions.

6) After a couple days, it starts feeling pretty easy. I feel good eating lighter. I enjoy the process.

7) A week later, I've lost some weight. It feels like magic. I feel great. I like the food I'm eating, I like being a little hungry for a meal because it tastes so good.

8) I feel like an idiot for waiting so long to track calories. Why am I so resistant? Why does it feel like magic when I track what I'm eating and eat fewer calories than I burn and lose weight?

9) Months go by and I steadily lose and approach my ideal weight.

10) Something happens. Usually it's travel - travel messes up my low cal eating plans royally. Once it was an injury that reduced my exercise.

11) There's a period where I find it impossible to stay anywhere near my calorie goal. I'm overeating most days! It feels really hard to control.

12) It seems pointless to continue tracking because tracking doesn't work if you don't stick to a calorie goal. I stop out of frustration. The last time this happened was last September. I had been tracking every calorie consistently for nine months. Then I went off the rails.

13) I start gaining weight, slowly but surely. Process repeats.

So, I hit step 4 last week and started tracking, and - ta da! - I'm down a pound or two this week. Like magic. Why do I never learn this lesson? What is the key to breaking this cycle? Why don't I ever learn?

kommodevaran · December 2017

It seems to me like you don't really have a problem with eating less (you find practical, enjoyable solutions that are easy to stick to under "normal" circumstances).

But it also seems like calorie counting doesn't work in your real life (which includes traveling - not being able to weigh/social eating/food made by others?), and that you rely on exercise too much in your calorie budget.

My suggestion would be to get in a meal schedule and a habit of eating reasonably sized and balanced meals at regular intervals (and not eat between meals), and walk everywhere, whenever practically possible. (What I do, incidentally

)

Jthanmyfitnesspal · December 2017

All I can say is "me too."

This year, I'm experimenting with maintaining as though I'm on a diet (logging daily). I want to remain at my goal weight on Jan 1 so that my new year's resolution can be something other than losing weight. It's been somewhat of a roller coaster year in general, so we'll see if I can do it. (I'm very close right now.)

Anyway, I found that I had to give up something to stop gaining weight. That thing turned out to be beer and wine.

kristen8000 · December 2017

You are not alone. I hit goal in Sept. 2017, for the 3rd time in 6 years. So obviously I'm great at losing and gaining. Maintaining is a mystery that I'll be spending the rest of my life figuring out. I mean, it really should be easy. You eat as much as your body needs and you stay basically the same size. But I've had issues in the past with "oh, I know what I'm doing, I lost all this weight, maintaining should be easy". Then months go by and start gaining or I avoid the scale or my pants get tight and I pull out my next size up. Completely avoiding the fact that I may need to start logging and making sure that I'm not eating to much. But it's hard to get to that point for me...it's a very dim bulb that takes months to get bright. I know what to do. It's doing it that's hard.

So, this time I have a plan. I thought about it the whole time I was losing. My plan is to weight EVERY DAY. No ifs, ands or butts. Find a scale. Get on it. Record the weight in a trending app (I use Libra), so I can see when I'm gaining and I can nip it in the bud before the crap hits the fan.

I had a weekend this past weekend that I didn't log. It was my 39th birthday and decided I wanted some freedom, but I was going to get back to it Monday. I still weighed everyday. I ate what I wanted. And guess what? I haven't gained. My trend is still down. And I got back to logging accurately Monday. I had fun, but now it's back to reality. And unfortunately, this will be my reality if I want to stay this size.

SummerSkier · December 2017

I think what you describe is very common. I am in the same boat. **this time** will be different tho. I began my focus on maintaining a lot earlier in the process. I am on week 10 maintenance now. The key for me was to just treat it like dieting (which we are good at, right?) and slowly add more calories week to week or every other week depending on how I felt. Continued daily weighing and tracking.

In some ways we are like alcoholics or drug addicts in that we can't just pretend we are "normal" whatever that is and go back to the old ways. If we want to succeed I really believe we might have to weigh and log the rest of our lives. For me the trade off is worth it. Others find it too restrictive.

This is the first time in my life I have ever lost the weight I wanted AND not ended with binge upon binge. I attribute that to setting an initial goal which left me room to lose a little more, and then slowly increasing calories as well as not really restricting from things I like. I do have to keep some things out of the house or only keep what I plan to use in the next couple of weeks.

Good luck. Of course no one thing works for everyone but hang out here in maintenance and read. that's what I have been doing even while still losing.

toxikon · December 2017

I think one key thing is to always always always hold yourself accountable.

Step on the scale every day and plug that number into a weight-trending app (Libra for Android or Happy Scale for iOS). Even when you're off the rails, binging every single day, keep up your habit of weighing yourself. Tell yourself it's as important as brushing your teeth every night!

Problems are much easier to ignore when they're not staring you in the face. If you stop tracking calories and stop weighing yourself, it's too easy to just turn the other way and pretend like everything is fine. Seeing that daily weigh-in number go up and up is impossible to ignore.

And sure, you may say "whatever, I've gained a few pounds, who cares" at first... but when you keep seeing that number go up, it may spur you to buckle down again - a lot faster than you would've if you were ignoring your weight.

Need2Exerc1se · December 2017

I think at least part of it is that maintenance doesn't provide the rewards that losing does. "Oh look my weight is the same" simply isn't as exciting as "Oh lookie there! I've lost another pound."

nowine4me · December 2017

Same boat here, up and down over and over and over. I have now “maintained” for a year, but what that really looks like on a graph is up 6, down 4, up five, down seven over the span of months and months.

I’m much more confident going into year 2. It’s become a reality that this is how it going to be. It’s just like dieting, but with a few more calories. I will have to weigh every day. Maybe or maybe not log.

achagpar · December 2017

Yup... me too. Was down at goal. Even a bit below goal. Then travel happens, you overeat, it’s hard to log, you can’t make it to the gym and now am over goal, feeling full, bloated, lazy and miserable. Time to hit the reset button ... but travel kills me every time...

lorrpb · December 2017

Set yourself a 5-10 lb maintenance range. Weigh weekly if not daily. When you get to the top of that range, resume weighing & logging your food and eat at a 100-200 deficit until you get back to mid range.
For me, I'm thrilled every day I stay within range. I'm thrilled to make it 14 months within my range. It might not feel the same as losing for some, but isnt' staying a healthy weight what this journey is all about to begin with? It's not easy, but it's possible, and you gotta "want it".

ccsernica · December 2017

What I've done is to keep logging during my workweek, aiming for a small 0.5 lb/week-sized deficit. It's easy then. My work days are very structured and it's easy to control the amount of food I eat. That allows me to forget about logging on the weekends, so if I'm eating out or doing something else fun I don't need to worry about keeping track.

It's worked so far. Recently my "centerpoint" has gone up about 3 lbs, but this has coincided with me beginning some weight training, so it's neither unexpected nor undesirable.

gymprincess1234 · December 2017

When you have travels/holidays/any celebrations, make a conscious decision not to eat at a deficit, but at maintenance. Basically, take a diet break, it works for me. When the period is over, get back to deficit.

HappyGrape · December 2017

I figured maintenance for me is 10 pounds range, and most of the time I am in the middle. I have resigned to the fact that I need to keep an eye on it and as you, travelling is where things get hard.

What I am going to say is that it's worth it and most people had number of attempts to achieve their goals (weight related and not) but it's important to stay on top of it and take any lessons we need to learn from past mistakes.

victoria_1024 · December 2017

This used to be me in the past too (hopefully it won’t be me again in the future!). I lost 90 lbs logging religiously on mfp. Once I hit maintenance, I continued to log everything and basically lived as though I were losing weight but eating maintenance calories.

About one year into maintenance, I started getting into other unhealthy patterns of binging and dieting. I’d have a weekend of binging, then restrict all week to make up for it. I don’t know why it was happening, but looking back I think I was not eating enough calories in maintenance so my body was craving more but I didn’t know it at the time. It didn’t feel good and I was feeling obsessive.

So about 9 months ago, I quit logging and stopped weighing myself daily. That was a huge step for me because I thought I was one of those people who would log forever in maintenance. But by that point I had been practicing some healthy habits that were pretty ingrained and I decided to try. I continued working out and being mindful about eating but stopped obsessing.

I’m happy to say I’ve been successfully not logging for 9 months now and approaching 2 years of maintaining within my maintenance range. My lifestyle feels doable now, logging forever maybe wasn’t but I’m still glad I logged as long as I did.

I feel like maintenance is just an experiment, or practice. If something isn’t working after a while, try something else. In the past if something wasn’t working, I’d just quit and gain all the weight back. I’m getting better at just making adjustments along the way and not having that “all or nothing” thinking.

Breaking the Regain Cycle

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