How does your slide start? How to re-engage?

mkculs13 · March 2020

I was reading another thread and realized that at least once, my slide back to bad habits began when I decided I could keep trigger foods in my house--I felt I had gained enough practice and self-discipline to eat them in "sensible" portions. Sure, for the first week or two . . .

Another clue I'm starting to lose steam on my plan is that I stop weighing daily. This usually happens in the winter, when I don't want to stand naked for the 10 seconds it takes to weigh myself, thinking "No big deal; I'll weigh sometime this week."

Getting busy and not planning what I will eat--"knowing" I can eat certain fast food items and stay within my calorie budget. All well and good, until I start adding a little of this or that to my fast food order, and b/c I am in a busy season, it starts to happen daily.

Those are a few of the things I can think of that seem to be a sign my efforts are flagging.

As I write this, I'm planning ways to address my early warning signals. I need to accept that I may never be able to keep trigger foods in my house. I have no problem with buying a single serving size, so why would I "need" to stop doing what works (yes, it does bother me that my plan is not as environmentally friendly as it could b, and that it costs more $ to buy in single serving sizes, but those are excuses I need to work around, not surrender to). This winter, I caught myself when making a decision not to weigh, and just did it--almost every day. This is the first winter in at least a decade I haven't gained back what I lost the previous summer.

I don't have a plan yet for addressing the issue of getting busy (busy compared to my usual routines, that is). Will be thinking on this.

How about you? I expect others have noticed warning signals I may get myself but haven't realized that's what they are.

lightenup2016 · March 2020

As I approach maintenance in another 10 lbs or so...I wish I knew!! I’m honestly not sure how it starts for me. Diet fatigue? Distraction by something new in life (good or bad)? I do think it has involved not continuing to log, but then, I don’t know what has precipitated that. I am hoping that I’ve got things figured out better now, since this time around, weight loss has been a lot easier than other times. So I’m hoping to continue as I am, only with a couple hundred extra calories than now.

I’d love to hear other insights as well!

lgfrie · March 2020

I've had a very similar experience. My "slide" usually starts with trigger foods I've brought into the house. For me, it's cookies, like Pepperidge Farm, any flavor. I'll tell myself I can handle it and that I have new habits, and that does work for a couple/few weeks. For a few weeks I will have ONE cookie after dinner and congratulate myself for being such a great dieter. There is something empowering about having food like that available and yet being very disciplined about only eating it within the target calorie deficit.

So far so good.

Then unpredictably, one night, out of the blue and in a very quick period of time, I eat every single cookie in the house. It starts sanely, with a few cookies, nothing too out of control. As I watch my 750 calorie deficit going up in smoke 75 or 100 cals at a time, I tell myself a maintenance day would be a totally acceptable thing right now and I'll stop there. But then there's that incremental add-on cookie that takes me juuuuust over maintenance; I'll tell myself it's OK because I've lost a lot of weight and don't really care if I give a tenth of a pound back and that's worth it for 350 cals more cookies, and then when I'm around 700 over I get in a "lost cause" mindset and vow to restart the next morning, at which point I decimate every cookie or cookie-like thing within reach, because, hey, I'm starting over tomorrow anyway so why not? Sometimes there's collateral damage, too, like granola bars I don't even like that much. While doing all this I *know* I will regret it, but it just happens. And then I do regret it the next day, because binges are stupid and slow down the weight loss substantially.

In the past, a binge night has been when my diets died, because it'd be followed by scale avoidance, and scale avoidance is truly the death knell of a diet for me. Without that accountability, I'm toast. So this time around, which started last May, I decided it would be a Groundhog Day diet. Meaning: no matter what transpired previously, every day I would get up and treat it as the first day of my diet. Feet on scale, butt on exercise bike, calories counted and logged, no exceptions no matter what happened the previous day. I have stuck to that and it's worked. I never try to make up for a binge, or bank calories for a future binge. If I overeat, that goes in the history books and I just start over. No guilt, no shame, no wallowing, just ... start Day 1 of the diet the next morning. This has worked extremely well for me to prevent binges from turning into diet-killers. Conversely, I have to admit it has encouraged a bit of "Well, I know I'm going to start over tomorrow morning, so for right now..."

I've lost 69 lbs but according to my spreadsheet, excluding binge days I shoulda been at 78-79 by now. I do regret giving back those 9-10 pounds even though they have not thrown me off my long-term game.

Having trigger foods in the house doesn't really work for me, and someday I will just admit that to myself and stop buying them.

PAV8888 · March 2020

I've taken a different tack in all this, this time around, and it basically started with the realization that *kitten* happens, and the back-slide WILL happen!

We all recognize slides after the fact. More often than not we also recognize them during the fact. It's just that we don't bring ourselves to do anything about them while they are happening. I mean most of us do not regain 20lbs without being aware that something is happening...

So how does one stop the slide from continuing?

Well, there is only one thing that can arrest it. The ability and willingness to intervene!

So, for me, what is a slide?

A slide is not cookies, it is not chips or even an occasional over-feed. [Unless over-feeds are a direct consequence of high restriction, something that can be "easily" tested for cause and effect, I believe that frequent binge-ing should be looked at and intervened for its own sake, separately of its effects on weight. And I do, also, believe that the warning signs conveyed by over-restriction generated binge-ing should not be ignored].

OK. back to the slide. It is not eating cookies. It is knowing that you're gaining weight day by day and week by week. Knowing that you're engaging in counter-productive behaviour. But believing that you're either too busy or too unwilling to do... whatever it is that you've convinced yourself is the behaviour you believe you should do to stop the slide. Knowing that you're avoiding the scale again and again. But telling yourself that you will tackle all of this tomorrow.

Or, that you will tackle all of this after the weekend.
After your friends' visit.
After the trip.
Next week.
Next month.
Once the holidays are over...

Or, that you don't care that much about any of this anymore and that you have other more important things to worry about at this time.
That you will tackle all this and other things once these other more immediate and important issues have resolved.

That is the slide that will have us back on MFP at +20, +50, +100lbs up.

So how, since it is unavoidable that the slide will *start*, do I plan to STOP IT?

Ever since I truly understood that i) my energy balance will determine my weight regardless of how and what I eat and ii) that I don't have to "kill myself exercising" in order to enjoy better health, I've been working on setting up my defences to slides. And creating for me an environment that I hope will foster slide recovery.

What are some of these mechanisms? Make it easy. Baby steps. No matter what happened earlier, it all starts with the very next choice. It starts with the very next item I am going to eat. It starts with my very next meal. It starts with the very next morning. No recrimination. No anger or despair that the previous intervention point was missed. Just whichever is the smallest intervention increment I can bring myself to apply!

I don't look to move from an overage to large deficit. A smaller overage is good enough! Bringing things to maintenance for a few days is great. Attempting a small deficit every few days is more than good enough! As long as we can swing things around to point into the right direction!

In fact, leading to maintenance and while at maintenance I am a firm proponent of trying to flatten the waves. To dampen the perturbations. Definitely on the way up, BUT ALSO on the way down! Not aiming for -500. Aiming for 250 fully expecting to go at half the speed of that!

Same applies to "exercise". If going out for a swim, or cycling, or a run, is not in the cards, then going for a walk may be. Or just going shopping at the mall. If I can't bring myself to lift weights, surely I can lift grocery bags and use a shopping basket or two instead of a buggy, right?

I am not going to claim that mall walking is the equivalent to running a marathon. But it was enough to get me started (and I hope, if things ever get to be that desperate, to keep me somewhat in the game!). And heck, a few years later, most 18 year olds have a hard time out walking me up a hill--even if I am carrying groceries!

So in the end, it boils down to willingness to engage to stop a slide.

Hence the picking of a way of eating I thought I could follow long term. Hence not moralizing or restricting my choices based on good vs bad foods but attempting to add "more desirable for health" foods that would MAYBE crowd-out a bit the frequency of "less desirable for health" foods. No attempts to remove anything, thus no fear of "missing out".

Removing time-tables from the equation: just setting up pre-conditions that will slowly get me there. Sliding slowly into maintenance (11lbs over 12 months) , attempting to flatten the curve and to go for small long term adjustments as opposed to sharp "large" interventions after holidays, or "slide inducing" life events.

In my books, making things as easy as possible by doing all of the above means that there is a higher likelihood that I will continue to be willing to engage to manage my weight when *kitten* happens.

I initially called maintenance in November 2016 at 156.9, but, it it is only 34 months since I firmly crossed the less than 156lb trending weight line, which is what I now call my upper maintenance range limit.

While I've moved up and down within my maintenance range (to as low as 152.2), I have only once crossed the over 156lb threshold to a high of 156.3 for 15 days, in May 2019, about two and a half months after my mom passed.

The subsequent 3.5lbs "correction" was at an average effective deficit of less than 107 Cal a day over the next 115 days. An effective restriction of 3.6% applied on an average TDEE of 2962 Cal. I was logging it as an 8.6% (-270 Cal) restriction on MFP, with a fairly high, for my logging, "Fitbit TDEE error" of 5.15%. The numbers are also off a bit because the tail end of this restriction includes the first 10 days of me not logging my food intake at all since starting on MFP 57 months prior.

Anyway. The whole point is that I attribute my willingness to try and fix the issue on having set up preconditions that would encourage me to do so instead of making things just hard enough that I would be more willing to let things continue to slide!

Will this work long term? I don't know, of course. Weight loss only buys a ticket to the maintenance lottery, and the experiment continues!

PS: I really hate that Fitbit and MFP restrict data exports/printouts such that I couldn't just select the 115 days I wanted but had to split them into 4 transactions per!

ReenieHJ · March 2020

Ugh I'm in the middle of a slide right now and have avoided my scale because I don't want to see.

Each day I start anew, thinking I'll track every single bite. Well, that doesn't happen. When I first started nothing entered my mouth that I didn't mean to eat and write down. I could say no and mean it. Now it's becoming more of a mindless thing. I need to become recommitted and more mindful of every time I put even a bite into my mouth. That's the key; don't get lazy and think what's one more bite? One more taste?
I worked hard to get below ideal weight, thinking I'd have a couple lbs. to spare. Unfortunately, it only takes a day to add that weight back on and much longer to recapture the right mindset.

PAV8888 · March 2020

ReenieHJ wrote: »

Ugh I'm in the middle of a slide right now and have avoided my scale because I don't want to see. Each day I start anew, thinking I'll track every single bite. Well, that doesn't happen. When I first started nothing entered my mouth that I didn't mean to eat and write down. I could say no and mean it. Now it's becoming more of a mindless thing. I need to become recommitted and more mindful of every time I put even a bite into my mouth. That's the key; don't get lazy and think what's one more bite? One more taste?
I worked hard to get below ideal weight, thinking I'd have a couple lbs. to spare. Unfortunately, it only takes a day to add that weight back on and much longer to recapture the right mindset.

I will try a sell job!

TRACKING does NOT equal RESTRICTING. Don't worry whether you mean to eat it, whether it is good for you to eat it, whether you should eat it, or even why you're eating it!

SURELY, you can make it a hard rule for yourself JUST FOR THE NEXT TIME you're about to open your mouth that you're NOT going to do so UNTIL YOU'VE LOGGED whatever is on your fork or spoon and is on its way in! <-- Just for the next bite if nothing else?

And surely if you can do it for one bite you can do it for anything else you're having during that same meal, right? I mean worse case: scale and pen and paper!

And if it isn't an official meal, it doesn't matter... just: it has to be logged before it goes down the hatch! Right?

Once you've logged for a couple of days, then go back and look at what you've been logging and how far above maintenance it is

Beyond that, the scale is just a data point! Heck, if it is high it just means that there will probably get a nice water weight drop once you get down to business!

Anyway, and jokes aside: having no hard data (logging, weight trend) means that you're reducing your ability to make rational data driven decisions. And I would think it a safe assumption that many of us who've ended up with a weight problem in the past have had at least some issues when it came to making the correct emotion based decisions about our weight!

ElizabethKalmbach · March 2020

My slides always start as a 3 week vacation off routine that doesn't pick the routine back up immediately after I get home. OFTEN this is because the routine has to change from what it was BEFORE vacation because the kiddo goes back to school and/or I come back from vacation with new responsibilities or ailments.

Sometimes my slides start because of a new illness/deficiency and they keep going until I can get a doctor to sort me out. This last slide took 4 different doctors to sort me out and the extra month of figuring added 10 lbs. >_<

I've decided that I need to track *activity level* in addition to food intake, as a rather steep drop in activity level was what caused my last significant gain - though a good portion of it was water that went away very quickly once the medical issue was sorted.

Having good fitness hardware has really helped me keep up with fluctuating activity level and my purchase of a Garmin VivoActive 3 totally justified itself this last month when I got the flu and stopped working out for the better part of 2 weeks to recover. I still lost one pound over two weeks, RIGHT ON SCHEDULE, because I was able to track my burn data each day and eat accordingly.

I always regret not logging when I AM logging, because I never have data available for comparison purposes when I hit a blip. >_<

riffraff2112 · March 2020

Ever since I was a youngster, I always gained weight in the winter and worked hard in the summer to get back to being skinny. As I got older, I was chubby most the year, and fat in the winter. As I slipped into middle age, I fear to report that I was fat all year and obese in the winter. Five years ago I reeled it in and lost about 45 lbs and I have been able to maintain within a window of 10-20lbs since then.

I still slip back in winter. I stop going out as much, spend way more time sitting and tend to snack a lot more at night from general boredom and inactivity. Our winters are really cold, and even though every year I try to get more active in the gym and try to monitor my eating better, the season coincides with extra duties at work (coaching basketball) and holidays and invariably I definitely lose momentum. I wish I had some tidbits of information to share with you as to how I overcame these slides...they still happen. I tend to get refocused about this time every year and have just kind of accepted that this is how life will look for me.

ReenieHJ · March 2020

I got brave this a.m. and jumped onto the scale. 2 lbs. up which is much less than I thought and is no biggie because I'm on the low end for my recommended BMI. I told myself if I'd stayed under a certain amount, I'd buy a pint of Ben and Jerry's while grocery shopping today, even had it on my list. I went to the deli and exited the store, completely forgot to pass through the frozen food aisle. Must have been my subconscious telling me something.

I thought about going back in when I returned my cart but thankfully, my laziness got the best of me. Lol
Then came home and used the TM, did some hula hoop time and feel much better about my choices.
Some days ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

midlomel1971 · March 2020

Without fail, it's always our end-of-summer beach vacation. I let myself relax and eat and drink whatever I want. And that's great...that's what vacations are for. But then I'm back home and we get in a stressful back-to-school mode, combined with a lot of football party eating and drinking, then it's the holidays and everything goes to *kitten*. Basically a lot of stress eating and laziness starts happening and I gain it back every. dang. time.

I just have to make a point to get back to the gym asap after that.

ReenieHJ · March 2020

midlomel1971 wrote: »

Without fail, it's always our end-of-summer beach vacation. I let myself relax and eat and drink whatever I want. And that's great...that's what vacations are for. But then I'm back home and we get in a stressful back-to-school mode, combined with a lot of football party eating and drinking, then it's the holidays and everything goes to *kitten*. Basically a lot of stress eating and laziness starts happening and I gain it back every. dang. time.

I just have to make a point to get back to the gym asap after that.

It IS challenging because life SHOULD be celebrated and lived well, surrounded by family and friends, enjoying good food and good company! Unfortunately, food seems to be such a huge part of all the celebrations.

It'd be different if I were one of those people who does fine with 'just one'. But I'm not.

I'm not done until everything is gone.

I need to start making more guacamole/hummus/veggie platters and leave most everything else to someone else. Trouble is when my sweet tooth feels seriously short-changed........:(

NovusDies · March 2020

I doubt many people are lucky enough to gain weight for some reason, lose that weight in one effort, and maintain for the rest of their life,

For the rest of us it is an iterative process. The not really a secret is not to repeat the same iteration more than once. Took me a long time to learn that secret. The other not really a secret is to start the next iteration as soon as the previous one ends. That is another lesson that took me too long to learn.

What worked for me is that I absolutely took quitting off the table. Once you stop quitting you learn to keep refining things that are not working or that could be working better. You keep asking "why?" Why did this day go poorly? Why did this day take so much effort to get through successfully? Why did this day go so well? That last one is one that takes training, or at least it did for me. Identifying the components of a really successful day is as important as learning from mistakes.

It is all a course study on yourself. You are learning how you behave while losing or maintaining. You are learning to manage yourself better. The mechanics of calories in vs calories out is quite simple. There are many ways to get there but finding your easiest path forward may require some trial and error.

Slashnl · March 2020

This is so interesting to me. I am right now working to get back on track after a pretty hefty slide. For me, it was an injury that kept me from doing the workouts I wanted to do. I had to take it easy, so for some reason, I also took it easy on tracking food. Then the bad habits start, with trigger foods making it back into my world. Logically, I look at it and I can't understand why my mind wouldn't think that if I can't workout, I have to really buckle down on the calories in part of the equation.

So, bottom line for me is that if I am out of a routine, I am off my game. I have to figure out that a change in routine doesn't stop the entire process.

puffbrat · March 2020

My slides tend to start with me not tracking everything I eat. It's basically me not wanting to hold myself accountable in writing for what I'm eating. I recover from it by making myself get back to logging everything. That is much easier said than done but I've done it enough times to recognize that basic step as critically important to my weight loss.

sschauer513 · March 2020

My slides are related to the little lies we all tell ourselves but know them be a lie. The trigger foods is excellent example saying I've changed and can eat just 1 Oreo a day its a lie will always be a lie for me. People always ask how did I lose my weight and simple answer is I quit lying to myself. The reason people don't log and I'm guilty as everyone is not the time it takes it's the slap in the face when it is done accurately and people don't want to face that truth.

How does your slide start? How to re-engage?

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