Inspo for people that lost and gained again -post here-

I can relate so much. In 2015 I started on mfp (203lbs) and six months later my weight was 184lbs. I noticed that I had to really 'torture' myself to go below that, so I tried to maintain, as I was very happy with how I looked and felt. My weight kept fluctuating between 182-190lbs, which isn't the end of the world, but I somehow lost track and ended up with 217lbs in 2018. I remember changing my eating habits, managing to go down to and stay at ~207lbs. Then I stopped paying attention.
As the weather is getting nicer, I tried on some of my Summer clothing - NOTHING fits, not even the clothes that were on the 'bigger side'. I braved the scales, weighing in at 234lbs - heavier than ever. I'm seriously disgusted with myself. I looked at photos of me in 2013 and even from a couple of years ago and I don't know how I could let myself go that much! So here we go again...
On the upside, we have done this before, so we know we are perfectly capable of doing this! At least that's what I'm telling myself.

Yup me too! So glad this thread was started. I've gone up and down a bit over time but in the past 3 years I've gained 20 lbs that I have been struggling to lose. But now that I am back on MFP it will be easier.

Please add me if you would like another friend during this tough journey of ours and we can help motivate each other!

Very glad this thread is here:)

Started in 2015-2017- lost 35 lbs, felt incredible, worked out daily
2017-2019- changed jobs to one where it started at 4:30 am, ended at 5:30 but was on call 24/7/365 so it was often much later before I was truly done working. Wasnt watching what I ate, ate for convenience vs nutrition, didnt track, didnt workout.
End of 2019-now- switched jobs and started to get back to here in April. down 8-10lbs presently of the 40 I gained.
I can do this and will do it. This time when I hit that number I need to learn maintenance, make a scale fluctuation range and track! I will and can do this. Started back at 178.9 and am now as of today 168.6 (some bloat hanging on here).

Feel free to add if you are looking for friends who do log daily. I do eat 1300ish calories before intentional workouts as I am very petite . When I get to maintenance I should be around 1800ish based on non active, hoping to be there by xmas!

Lose, Gain, Repeat, My history with weight. Now I'm older, less active and the fattest I've ever been. Started another weight loss journey Jun 01 2020. Fingers crossed.

Another one. 7 years ago found MFP, lost 100 lbs. Kept it off for a good 2 years. Started slowly gaining every year. Divorce, new job, new routine, new bf (so lots of eating out) was up 50 by the time covid hit. Threw myself an amazing pity party for 2 weeks and thought, nono, you dont get to gain the covid 19, we are gonna lose 19. Sitting here at 13 lb loss. Headed back to work in a couple weeks (hallelujah) might not reach the 19 goal by then but Ive got time.

I lost 50 lbs (which still didn’t get me to my goal) in 2018, fell off the wagon for most of 2019 and gained about 10-15 lbs back. 2020 has been a bit of a struggle but I finally got back on track about 6-8 weeks ago.

Do I wish I had stayed on track for 2019? Absolutely. But I’m still proud of what I did accomplish in 2019. I became a runner, trained for and completed my first half-marathon, and really got into fitness so much more. I may not have been losing weight but I was still living a healthier, more active lifestyle than I used to and I could have gained so much more than 15 lbs in a year if I had gone right back to how I used to live. So I still see 2019 as a year of progress, just different progress.

And there were lots of years before 2018 where I lost and re-gained the same 20ish lbs over and over again. You just have to keep trying.

I’ve been losing and gaining for over 45 years! 😱. Went on my first calorie controlled diet when I was 13 years old. I must have lost and re-found the equivalent of several people during that time😠. I lost 45lbs in 2012 and had regained 34. In January started again and have lost 25 so far so only 9 to go.😊.
I think the losses and regains is the way it will always be for me. I’m always going to want to eat more than my body needs. I’ve got the appetite of a male 6ft6” manual labourer inside the body of a 5ft 4” female office worker. So, slipping back is so,so easy.
One advantage is that over the years I’ve developed a certain expertise in both losing and gaining. I’ve certainly realised that there is nothing of value from self recrimination and negative self talk. When feeling positive and kind to oneself it is definitely the better frame of mind for being healthy.

I have lost , gained and now lost again and still losing. Today I’m not following a diet but a schedule of eating...OMAD. Started off with fasting and worked my way to Omad. It’s not for everyone but it works for me. Here’s a few pics of my journey

I started at 282. Lost 61lbs. I even lost over thanksgiving and Christmas. Then I was looking over my progress from before and it started making since. I started being mentally, verbally, and emotionally abused! My weight went up so fast and I didn’t even realize it fully until today! I have spinal issues so spinal block and steroids took my behind to 295! he finally broke up with me because he found someone that they just clicked and I am finding me again.
30 lbs down today and I’m still going! It’s so nice to see me again!

From 2011-2012 I had my two children back to back. I couldn’t handle my bodies changes and decided to do what I could to get back to my pre-baby body. I hyper focused and was not in a good place mentally. I was on the verge of an eating disorder and by 2013-2016 the smallest I’d ever been. I was obsessive and compulsive about every gram of food I put in my mouth and how much exercise I had to do a day.
Midway through 2016 I ended up in icu for 6 weeks and spent another 6 weeks unable to get out of bed afterwards. I became depressed and started to gain weight rapidly. In August 2019 I was on the edge of being a diabetic and 220 pounds!!!! I made a decision right then and there, that I would get healthy the RIGHT way.

Today is June 6th 2020 and I am 166 lbs. I struggle everyday to eat what I need to, to keep me healthy, strong and mindful. I struggle daily to not over restrict myself or obsess. I struggle daily with getting enough food in my body, but I do it and prove to myself everyday that I can still lose weight while eating a balanced diet.

I have done the yo-yo thing more times than I can count. I like to think that I learn something new each time to make me more successful. Looking back at the first time I ever tried MFP, I really had no idea what I was doing. Some things I have figured out through trial and error:
1. 1200 calories will never work for me. I can white knuckle it for a few months at best, but I feel so deprived that it sets me up for overeating.
2. "Cheat days" do not work for me. After one yo-yo, I tried to fix this by doing just "cheat meal." A third time, I tried to allow myself one 2,000 calorie day per week (with the rest being 1200) so I was getting a "splurge" but it was controlled and counted. Nope, nope, and nope. This just sets me up to keep overeating.
3. There is no such thing as "cheat foods." Any food can fit into my calorie day. Over time, I find I get used to smaller portions and overeating doesn't hold the same appeal. For example, I'm totally satisfied with 5-6 wings instead of 10. Pretty much anything can fit into my calorie day as long as I don't eat several servings of it. And I've never liked the "stuffed" feeling anyway so that helps.
4. The summary of the above things is that setting a weight loss goal of 1 pound per week where I get 1550 calories every day has really helped me. If I want more than that, I do extra walking and eat my exercise calories back. Many days I actually eat around 1650.
5. Although I can fit any food into my calorie day and it's important for me to eat foods I like every day, eating healthy foods is also important. Several times I lost weight eating 1200 calories of junk every single day. That doesn't make me feel good about myself and also sets me up to be in an unhealthy mindset even though calories are being counted. If I'm eating pure junk all day long, it's not much of a leap to eat a bit more, then a bit more, etc. until I fall off the wagon all together. Now I strive for balance.
6. I do better with 2 large meals per day or 3 medium sized meals. "Grazing"/6 small meals per day, snacking, etc. does not work for me. I don't find small meals/snacks to be satiating and I end up feeling hungry all day long.
7. I do better when I delay my eating until later in the day. It is easy to tell myself I can have what I want, I just need to wait a couple of hours. Breakfast makes me hungrier all day so I don't eat it. No matter what I eat for lunch while working (not from home) I am ravenous at the end of the work day. It's better to save the majority of calories for the evening when I'm most hungry and can relax and enjoy them.
8. I have to stop thinking in black and white, which is really difficult for me. If I mess up at lunch, my immediate thought is to eat whatever I want for the rest of the day and then "get back on track tomorrow." This often leads to days, weeks, or months of overeating. I've gained so much weight doing this. Now if I "mess up" I immediately log it and a whole lot of the time, it's fixable. Often I can even stay within my calorie goal if I do extra walking and eat slightly less the rest of the day. At worst, I can do the above and at least stay within my maintenance calories for the day. I ended up doing that one day this week. I couldn't get to goal that day, but I just did a bit of extra walking the rest of the week and made up for the calories over the course of the week.
9. The only exercise I find even remotely enjoyable long term is steady state cardio, and 30 minutes is about my limit. In the past I would feel pressured to do "better" exercises such as fitness classes/videos that were total body workouts (doing things like jumping jacks, burpees, mountain climbers, etc. for 45-60, sometimes 90 minutes). Yes those exercises are "better" but I hated every minute. Definitely not a way to stick to something.
10. My fitbit is really important to maintaining a "healthy mindset" throughout the day. Getting in my steps helps me stay on track even though it doesn't burn that many calories. I march in front of my TV (a life saver in quarantine) to get the steps in most days. I'm not going to spend 1-2 hours doing that and then decide to sit down and stuff my face.

Most of this, I learned before my last attempt, which was last summer. I was doing very well sticking to my goals. Over the course of the summer I went from 203 (my highest weight ever) to 190. While that's decent progress, especially considering I knowingly set myself up to only lose 1 pound per week, I still felt "super fat." Even the 190 was at the top of where I'd ever been before. I could see that my face and arms looked slimmer especially, but seeing those numbers on the scale just made me really depressed. By the time fall rolled around and some stressful things happened in my life, I felt like it wasn't worth it to keep going because I was still fat anyway. I could lose 20 more pounds and be "still fat."

So this time I'm trying something I would have never done before. I'm not weighing myself. I have no idea what I weigh which is oddly freeing. I started January 1 and this is approaching the longest I've ever been able to stay "on track" before. I don't know what I weigh, but I know I feel significantly better, both emotionally and physically. My face and my arms especially look 10x better. I've watched myself slowly start fitting into clothes that were too tight, and I've gone from a size 18/20 to a 14/16. Eventually I know I'll need to start/keep weighing as I get smaller, because it will be harder to lose at a much smaller weight and I'll need to make sure I'm on track. At this weight though, I have a long way to go and I'll definitely keep losing with my deficit even if I make minor mistakes. And when I do get down to a much smaller size where weighing becomes more important, I won't be dealing with that "but I'm still really fat so who cares" mindset.

I have so much guilt for gaining back 50 of the 80 lbs I worked so hard to lose! I lost my mom, my father inlaw month after that, and a month later my house was destroyed in a natural disaster. To top it all off I very unexpectedly got pregnant for my daughter. I just didn't care after that point... Now, I hardly eat and STILL am gaining. I don't get it. 1200 strict calories makes me gain???

I gradually lost 3-4 stone about 6 years ago, I got to a maintain weight where I was content, I was active and enjoying exercise, I was eating well and not having to think about calories, and I felt good and strong. During this time I even had a few surgeries on my stomach, and somehow managed to reign in the weight gain and get back to exercising and eating well when I was healed. Then 2 years ago a lot changed in my life at the same time. I had steroid injections, I moved in with my parents after my flatmate was fired and couldn't pay her rent, and I changed jobs - all within the same month. I spiralled, and within a year I had gained 3 stone back. Living with my parents hasn't been easy, they're feeders and fill the fridge with chocolate and junk, after dealing with a few bouts of depression my will power to resist the naughty food has all but gone. I have to put up with this for now as I'm saving to buy a house, I know once I move out I should hopefully go back to my old ways. It's weird that lockdown has actually helped me gain some control over my eating and put the time into what I'm cooking. I've only been healthy eating for 6 weeks but I've lost 7.5lbs, not exactly back to my original weight I was a few years ago yet, but it's a good start and I'm proud of myself!

I lost about 150 pounds. Was going to the gym regularly, had completely cut out processed sugar and was on a good ‘streak’ and super close to my goal weight. I lost hope when I had worked so hard and still wasn’t able to participate in the things ‘normal’ girls could do, like shopping for clothes or dating. I have so much loose and sagging skin all over its disgusting, have to wear all kinds of shape wear and sometimes 2 bras under long pants and long sleeves year round because it jiggles and pulls clothing fabric. I still live in hoodies and yoga pants and have so much trouble finding professional clothes it makes me cry. I went down several sizes and the clothes still didn’t fit, still weren’t flattering at all. The weight I lost in my face and cheeks aged me so much and my neck sags and wiggles when I speak. My hair thinned a lot which apparently can happen with major weight loss. I look like an old woman now. I saw all these lovely before and after where other girls finally feel cute and confident in a dress etc. but not me.
A big part of my weight loss journey was for health reasons so I know my post may sound vain and shallow. It’s just that I was looking forward to those little wins so much because when your very heavy you miss out on a lot of that girl stuff like looking pretty and being hit with the realization that my body is ruined and it’s something I will never be able to have unless getting multiple major surgery which will leave huge scars and is completely unaffordable crushed me. I am heartbroken to have worked so hard and in many ways look way worse now.
Little by little I started into bad habits and combined with schedule changes was unable to make the gym as regularly as before to balance out the stress eating.
Im trying to start again as I’ve gained back over 40 pounds. I’m not happy about having to lose the weight I already lost again and hoping that will help keep me going.