Musings on regaining after some success

Just a bit of thinking aloud on how and why I regained after making so much headway last year, in case it helps anyone / stops it happening to me again! Obviously, lockdown didn't help, but the seeds of this "failure" were sown before that, in December, so I don't think I really have that to blame, though it certainly didn't help. When the aid of MFP, I had lost 2.5 stones over 5 months in the second half of 2019. By July this year, I had gained 1.5 stones of it back. I've been back on track for the last three weeks (5 pounds down so far), and mulling over what went wrong the first time around. I genuinely had thought I'd got this weight loss thing nailed, and regaining was something that happened to other people. Humble pie is in order, I think, even if my favourite pie is now off the menu.

So, how did I "fail"? A few ways, I think.

* I stopped weighing and logging food (and myself) "for a few days" (which became 8 months).

* I caused the need to stop by reaching diet burnout. Not so much from the diet itself, but because I was so tired of weighing and logging food. In hindsight, my phone at the time was glitchy, and it would crash every time I opened the MFP app. It was driving me mad. We don't need to make this time harder than it is, and that one tech problem caused me to spiral. I also got so tired of planning ahead for cooking, and found eating out at a friend's house (when I couldn't accurately gauge the calories) immensely frustrating, almost considering it a "binge" because I couldn't definitively say it was within my calorie goal.

* I think I also got lazy with weighing food accurately myself, and the weight loss slowed to an absolute crawl, slowing my enthusiasm with it. I was down to my last stone, I knew it would get slower, but not having that weekly boost of at least a pound dropped was hard. I wasn't as mentally set up for maintenance as I thought I was. Instead of sugar rushes, I had become addicted to the drama of weight loss. With little new to learn (I thought), and no big drops in weight, I got bored.

*I gradually let the sugar and carbs back in, until I was craving them constantly. They were still (mostly) within my caloric budget, but they woke up that voice in my head that is never satisfied. What had been a relatively easy weight loss journey up to that point became a constant battle, which definitely fueled the burnout feeling.

*I went away for a few days, which broke my exercise routine. Of course, I never picked it back up again, and then the gyms and pools closed.

So, nothing much, really, just a lot of little things that added up. I think I forgot to make it all easy, and my black and white mentality couldn't cope with my change in routine. This time round, I really need to think of it as less of a diet and more of a lifestyle change. Any normal lifestyle needs to allow for changes in routine and the occasional guestimate in calculations. Above all, I need to hold myself accountable to myself, and weigh in every single day. Even if I throw in the towel again, I mustn't do it with my head buried in the sand and my fingers stuck in my ears, pretending it's not happening this time. I wonder if I should have tried a more formal diet break (eating at maintenance) before tackling the last stone, or whether my best bet even now is to "reverse diet", eating at maintenance calories for my goal weight so that I am consciously acknowledging it will be a slow, undramatic journey. Maybe I will, when I've lost a few more pounds. Maybe I'll make the same mistakes all over again. As a teacher, I'm always taking the kids that mistakes are how we learn. Perhaps it wasn't a mistake after all, just part of the learning curve. I'd love to hear stories from anyone else who has got a similar wall, and what you did to prevent it happening again?

Thank you for reading!