People who lost weight and then gained it back

Congrats! You are doing an awesome job so far. This has happened to me in the past, there are a few reasons. One would be that I may have been on a diet that was too restrictive, which I then lost control. The second reason would be lifestyle changes, going from working in a bar, drinking/partying and not eating all that much, to sitting on my butt all day in an office and eating too much crap. The third would be, just generally 'letting myself go'. Basically making bad eating habits knowingly, but not really worrying about it. Not really noticing the weight coming back on, and then BOOM your fat again!

Basically, you need to change your lifestyle. And it needs to be sustainable. It's always going to be calories in vs calories out, so you just need to make sure you are sensible with your eating habits.

IMO, and from client confessions, the reason people gain back weight is because whatever system they were doing to lose weight, isn't going to be a lifestyle that they can live with. If certain foods that they enjoyed were restricted or they had to abstain from them, then the chances of indulging in them once they meet their goal is pretty high. Diets are temporary in the majority of cases.
This is why I don't encourage any kind of dieting for clients. I encourage calorie control and making sure that they ensure that they meet their daily macros and micros. These clients don't have issues with weight regain.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group FitnessTrainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 28+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

I think I lost 21 lbs in total in May 2011, when my cousins and aunt from Hong Kong and Hawaii came to visit for another aunt's wedding and I stopped watching what I ate. And then another aunt came so I ate like **** with her around, too. And then my grandparents came, and well... you know. But I maintained, floating around 21-24 lbs lost.... until like last month when I think I gained 10 of it back. And now I'm only at 15 lbs lost... It's so sad. But I've been eating like crap lately with such a crap diet. It just sucks because I maintained for a year and just started gaining it back and seriously struggling to start losing again! ugh.

Just keep up with your diet and don't let people around you influence how you eat. Because that's honestly what set me off track and I have a strong feeling that if they hadn't come over or if I had still stuck to my diet even with them here, I'd be at or a lot closer to my goal weight.

IMO, and from client confessions, the reason people gain back weight is because whatever system they were doing to lose weight, isn't going to be a lifestyle that they can live with. If certain foods that they enjoyed were restricted or they had to abstain from them, then the chances of indulging in them once they meet their goal is pretty high. Diets are temporary in the majority of cases.
This is why I don't encourage any kind of dieting for clients. I encourage calorie control and making sure that they ensure that they meet their daily macros and micros. These clients don't have issues with weight regain.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group FitnessTrainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 28+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

Sounds like a good plan. When you finally reach goal and increase your cals to maintain, will you gain some back or will you stay at that weight more or less? (assuming you stay in your cal goal for maintain)

I've gained back 15 lb out of 42 lb lost. What happened? I quit smoking. I'm not really sure why that caused me to plateau, but it did. I was trying so hard at the time not to let it affect my weightloss, but it did. I became ravenous and my body mistook nicotine cravings for hunger. The hunger was insatiable. But honestly, I really didn't give in to it enough to have caused the plateau. I ended up gaining back 5 lb. and I stayed there for months and months

Then I sprained my ankle and then had to have surgery on my jaw with 3 extractions (all molars). That's when I gained back the other 10 lb. I just sort of gave up for awhile. I got completely and totally derailed.

Still trying to deal with a little binge problem I developed after I quit smoking. Trying to get back on track. I've done the research, I know what I'm doing now. But it's still really discouraging. I don't weigh myself very much anymore.

Wrecked my knee, had surgery, slow year long recovery and still ate like I was exercising regularly.

Congrats! You are doing an awesome job so far. This has happened to me in the past, there are a few reasons. One would be that I may have been on a diet that was too restrictive, which I then lost control. The second reason would be lifestyle changes, going from working in a bar, drinking/partying and not eating all that much, to sitting on my butt all day in an office and eating too much crap. The third would be, just generally 'letting myself go'. Basically making bad eating habits knowingly, but not really worrying about it. Not really noticing the weight coming back on, and then BOOM your fat again!

Basically, you need to change your lifestyle. And it needs to be sustainable. It's always going to be calories in vs calories out, so you just need to make sure you are sensible with your eating habits.

^^this

plus: I'm an all or nothing type guy. So I have to be careful if injured because this can mean that when I can't exercise I am likely to add crappy eating to the list of problems. This behaviour also means that if I have a poor quality lunch I am much more likely to say "to hell with it" and have a poor quality dinner.

1 reason was because I moved in with my partner & we became complacent - then I got a Mon-Fri 9 to 5 job which wasn't my norm (I'm a shift worker, didn't realise how much freedom it gave me) & then all in this time I got some life changing news & that was the straw that broke the camels back. I gained approx 25kgs - then I fell pregnant.

It can be hard - life gets in the way - still it's just excuses that I've made.

Learning to maintain your weight should be given just as much attention as learning to lose. Just my opinion.

I totally agree with this. Part of a weight loss journey is learning to maintain at the end. Achieving your goal weight is awesome, but you have to figure out what to do from there. It is a HUGE part of weight loss and I see so many people so focused on losing that they hit their goal weight and don't know how to keep going.

Although I have only ever had a modest amount to lose (20 - 30 lbs), I have lost it, regained (most of) it, and am now losing it again.

Why did I gain the weight back? My old fitness instructor moved to pastures new, so I didn't have that friendly "kick in the tail" to persuade me to exercise, and I got complacent about what I was eating. Add this to a reasonable sized dose of stress, anxiety and depression, and I don't think it's surprising that my diet was full of rubbish.

This time I am determined that I will be leaner and stronger, that I will get to like exercise and that I will sow the seeds for a way of life. I am not "on a diet" - I am pursuing a healthy lifestyle. I already feel better for it!

It took you a long time to put it on it will take a long time for you to lose it

I haven't put it all back on, but, I have always started dieting again if I put more than a stone back on.

Also I keep within my daily maintain calories

I think two big final lessons I have learnt are don't under-eat by more than 500 . Don't deny yourself any food

A lot of people can't give up chocolate because they deny themselves it instead of just saying 'I don't want it'

Five years ago, I lost half my body weight, around 140lbs. Since then, my weight has slowly crept back up and I am now 75lbs overweight (was 90lbs, but have lost 15lbs so far since starting MFP in April). How did I let this happen? This is a tough question...

Over the five years, I put weight back on due to specific events...eg I put 4lbs on during a three week holiday or 5lbs on over Christmas. The problem was I never knuckled down enough to loose those pounds afterwards (like I think some normal weight people do). During my normal day-to-day eating, I would maintain my weight (I generally don't eat junk, take away for anything like that). So basically, I would 'splurge' on something and then not do the hard yards to get it back off.

This was also combined with moving countries which was the biggest upheaval of my entire life. All the foods I had known, all the exercise routines I had established, completely changed. Losing weight was no longer the top priority for my life and I couldn't spend hours on it like I used. It's taken me a long time to adjust.

But as I write this, I feel like I am making excuses. At the end of the day, I took my eye off the ball and I now know that I will never be able to do that again. It's exhausting thinking about it how much this is a battle I will have my entire life but it's more exhausting being obese.

You might also find this article interesting...http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/tara-parker-pope-fat-trap.html?pagewanted=all

After I had my daughter I lost 105 pounds (from 310 at her birth to 250 without working at it then 205)...

Then I got diagnosed as hypoglycemic. I also go the news that I have a heart rhythm disorder and will one day need a pace maker as well as was told that I have extraordinarily low blood pressure and needed to add more salt to my diet.

I honestly felt betrayed by my body and decided to just try to stay at that weight rather than lose more weight. I also felt discouraged because I didn't know how to eat for hypoglycemia. I couldn't do what I had been doing to lose weight when I'd been told that I needed to consume at least 6 grams of protein every 2-3 hours.

In all honesty, looking back, I wasn't tracking calories but I couldn't have been eating enough and I was super restrictive. I had a list of things I wouldn't allow myself to eat- pork, any added fat, ice cream, any and all sweets, red meats, etc... It really wasn't the way to go. My body was starving! My body seriously held onto EVERYTHING afterwards.

Not very long after my diagnoses I moved across the country to be with my SO. I started working at a job I hated and eventually changed jobs to one where I work 50 hours a week. I had to deal with cohabitation and all of those stresses. I also went from simply raising my daughter on my own to helping raise his as well (he has custody). I also had my grandfather and uncle (step-mother's family) die within a month of each other. My maternal grandmother became ill and went into a nursing home. I caught pneumonia and was out of work for an entire month and also on steroids for much of that month. Not to mention, my SO has very different eating habits (150 pounds and eats whatever he feels like without gaining weight.)

I got depressed and I turned to food in my time of need-mostly sugar laden foods. I produce too much insulin and sugar only exacerbates the cycle. I eat a bunch of sugar and my body produces a flood of insulin as a response, causing my blood sugar to then drop rapidly and me to feel even more depressed/sluggish/shaky. I then eat more sugar to bring my blood sugar back up. Emotional eating- that monster that I thought I'd slayed was really my downfall. However, with a score of 300 on the Holmes and Rahe stress scale and depression in my past, is it really so surprising that I gained 80 pounds in a year and a half?

Now, I'm losing weight the right way for me. I'm watching my carbs (hypoglycemia makes this essential), getting enough protein, exercising moderately and generally trying to remember that slow and steady wins the race... I even took a week off while I was on vacation and managed to get back on track when I came home!

I lost about 70 lbs in about 7 months back in the 90's. Did that by going to Weight Watchers, but cheating like crazy, and exercising my butt off, literally. I was in the gym 5 days a week, minimum. Then we had our fist baby. Well, up at 2am, then 3:45am, guess what? I'm not getting up at 5am to hit the gym, I'm tired! Exercise stopped, and 130 pounds and 17 years later I'm here. I lost a lot but I did not change my eating habits.

I'm taking years to lose this time because I'm losing eating on a maintenance plan, NOT a diet. On other programs it was that deprivation and trying to go 'back' to real food that did me in. I'm losing not depriving myself of anything, just eating what I should every day. It's gonna take me about 3 years to get where I want to be. That's fine.

For me I am 51, married in high school (no, not preg.) but I was bigger then I wanted to be. Until then I never gave my weight much thought but the moment that I admitted that "I have a weight problem" there was NO turning back. Although I went through times that I let myself go the "Knowing " was always in the back of my mind haunting me. So I now realize it will never go away even after reaching my goal I will know I still have a weight problem but this time I plan to use that "knowing" as a controling tool instead of being agravated by it. It will always have to watch it to keep it in check

Its like climbing a rope you don't struggle ,fight and strain to get to the top just to totally relax .