Since I know I'm not the only one here chipping away at a regain, I'm going to post some of my thoughts about how I got here.
On the face of it, weight regain MAKES NO SENSE.
Spend a year (or more) losing weight. Buy all new clothes. Have a newfound lease on life. Start enjoying all kinds of things that were off-limits before: sports, activities.. Look great in pictures, etc. etc.
It's so much work to get the weight off in the first place, and life is clearly SO MUCH BETTER after the loss... why wouldn't you KEEP the weight off? Right?
So, are my thoughts on the subject. I don't know if these will be meaningful to others, but here's hoping.
1. Distraction Losing weight is not easy. Eating is almost automatic, so when losing weight you constantly have to remind yourself. That monitor in your brain has to be turned to high volume all day ever day for months and years at a time. Usually, when we start trying to lose weight, there is some catastrophic event that propels us into it-- a realization that we simply can't live that way any more. Then comes the excitement of the journey, the ever-shrinking clothing sizes. It's a whole new life and it's easy to pay attention to. But then, you maintain for a while and all of those things seem less apparent. The horrors of morbid obesity fade from the mind. The thrill of wearing new clothes starts to seem more mundane. Still and all, at least in my experience, you can still maintain, as long as you think about it. But what happens when suddenly all kinds of big life events intervene. What happens when weight loss is no longer number one, two, or three on your mental agenda? At least in my experience, this is the danger time. I think our brains only can concentrate hard on so many things at a time-- a family stress, a big work responsibility... anything that really takes up a lot of mental real estate can distract us. Once we are no longer concentrating so hard it's much easier to slip up here and there without really noticing it. Which leads me to:
2. Denial If, like me, you used to be 100 or more pounds overweight, you can still feel thin and amazing ten or twenty pounds below your lowest ever weight. You still have a spring in your step, you still exercise. All but the most tailored of your clothes still fit. You may worry a bit about the small weight gain, but then someone takes a picture of you and feel relieved. You still look relatively thin. The morbidly obese individual has not reappeared (yet.) Somehow, I started to know instinctively which outfits to avoid trying on. They wouldn't have fit, but I didn't have to face it because I never tried them on. The problem is that if you've lost A LOT of weight you can put on quite a lot and still be a lot smaller than you were before. Until suddenly, you're not. In my case, I feel like it hit me like a ton of bricks... I went along more or less maintaining for a year, creeping up a few pounds, but not enough to really notice, still being quite happy with my state, and then all of a sudden when life stress hit big time and I wasn't paying that much attention, I also started to exercise big time denial. I managed to put back on a total of 70 pounds before I really woke up and realized the truth. What made me realize it? Only that I started to feel sick again. I started to get little glimmers of the way I used to feel. And I don't feel sick from being fat until I'm up in the morbid obesity level. Now, of course, I wish I had clued in a lot sooner.
3. Do-it-later
This was perhaps the most dangerous of all of the three. I KNEW I was starting to creep up, but I kept thinking, "I know how to lose the weight. I'll buckle down soon..."Heck, I had already lost 110 pounds. If I bounced up five, ten, or fifteen, how hard could it be to lose it again? And then, when I knew I was putting on more weight (how much? I didn't know, see denial, aboove.) Because again, when stress and distraction made me want to overeat as a coping strategy, I didn't, at first, realize the true consequences. It almost felt like I was getting away with it-- FOR A WHILE.
I'm trying to find some take-home lessons in here for me, and I think for me the absolute biggest one is that I'm going to have to learn how to reduce stress. Hopefully, if I never get to DISTRACTION I can keep the other two problems at bay.
I can't thank you enough for being so honest and thoughtful about your experiences, Ubergirl.
I am slowly beginning my transition to maintenance and I worry a lot about losing the focus that has gotten me this far. Your points about still feeling trim and fit 20 pounds into a regain resonate very strongly for me. I bet I'll come back to this post as I get deeper into maintenance ...
How often did you weigh in while losing weight and then during maintenance? Was it the same amount?
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I weighed daily throughout my weight loss and for at least six months of maintenance. I just checked my fitday and this is what I discovered.
I reached my lowest point ever in July 2010 and I kept my weight up and down within ten pounds of that weight until Jan 2011. In February, I crept up a bit and then maintained about fifteen pounds above my lowest weight from Feb 2011 to June 2011. In June 2011 I added ten more pounds but then lost them again in July 2011. So I had basically maintained about 97 or 98 pounds of my 110 pound weight loss for an entire year. But after July, I have no further weights recorded in my fitday. I do know that I pretty much hung in there until about mid-October and I have a vague memory of stepping on the scale sometime in November and seeing 238 and then I avoided the scale entirely until a week ago.
I packed back on the lion's share of the weight between mid-October and Jan 10. Sigh.
Sure, weighing every day helps a TON. The problem is when you somehow decide to convince yourself not to step on the scale. Even when denial is in operation, at some level you still "know" the truth.
I think for me, where I land is never good enough, so why maintain it? That's a huge problem.
This particular regain of mine has come from not being mindful enough. I should have spoken up sooner to my finance and told him I can't have ice cream and other treats every night. That was a very bad start.
During my loss it was my full time hobby. Once I got to the 100 lbs. lost mark, it lost it's place as my primary focus and the loss stopped and (luckily) very slow regain has begun. Luckily I really did get rid of all larger clothes so having to struggle to get into my jeans got my attention and I'm trying to get into the groove again, but am currently a bit stuck in the same 5 lb range.
Those reasons are exactly why I am a daily weigher, and if my weight goes outside a four pound window or so (up or down two pounds on either side) I take steps to actively lose the excess or add back in a few more calories. I do myself no favors by procrastinating, ignoring, or thinking myself immune to, regains.
Having had a small regain of my own, the biggest issue was definitely the putting it off you mentioned. I wasn't getting serious enough with myself, assuming the next week would show a loss. But now I realize I can't eat the SAD and maintain easily, so changes must be made. Simple, but not easy
Well, if I had to pinpoint the single reason that I regained it was that my life went through a lot of huge upheavals RIGHT after I lost all the weight. I moved to a new city, sold my house, bought a new one, changed jobs, had a whole bunch of really big stuff happen in my career....
I had to find new everything: new gym routine, new shopping routine, and even more importantly, whole new lifestyle routine. I was about 100x busier.
I'll never know, but I think if I could have stayed in the same routine that I was in when I lost the weight I might not have struggled so much.
Hats off to all of you were were losing with me and are still hanging in there.
Honestly, I totally NEVER thought I'd be a regainer-- and here I am.
Ubergirl - You're going to do it this time and keep it off. You have so much insight as to what happened. I agree that daily or weekly weighing is key. As well as not allowing yourself to buy bigger clothes. I have no clothes at all except what fits me now. I was determined to buy as little as possible while I was losing that I looked pathetic most of the time all last year! I can't afford to do this again. On reason I was so driven to lose it all in a year was so I wouldn't have to buy new winter coats, etc. more than once. I can't let the weight creep back on.
I do know this. thin people gain and lose weight all the time. Over holidays, on vacation, when they just let loose a bit too much. But they stay thin because they get back on a healthy plan quickly. If you ask any healthy weight person if they gained a few pounds over Christmas, for example, the answer will be about 100% that they did. My brother can still wear the jeans he wore in high school. He is 59 and in great physical shape (not body-builder, just trim and fit) and he gains 8 or 10 pounds every winter. Same with my boss who is 60. He's a runner and rides his bike about 100 miles a week. But not in the winter. He calls it the February Flab. the difference is that they both take the weight off in the spring instead of letting it pile on like most of us do. We have to give ourselves permission to be "normal." And to deal with gains in a timely manner. That's the lesson I hope I've learned. I'm only 4 months into maintenance, but I take heart from all the members in here who have maintained for years.
you've given us all food for thought. We're in this together. We will be successful.
Ubergirl - On reason I was so driven to lose it all in a year was so I wouldn't have to buy new winter coats, etc. more than once. I can't let the weight creep back on.Lin
Man I hear you on that one. Last winter, I had no coats that fit-- my old 3X parka was just so giant I had to get rid of it. I replaced it with a really nice down coat-- size regular Large. Now, it won't even think about zipping. But I have not replaced it. I'm freezing with it unzipped this winter, and next winter, it'll zip.
ubergirl - this is exactly what happened to me over the last 3 months!! i'll be lucky if i only gained back 20 of the 50 i lost in the months previous. i understand the whole 'distraction' issue. if i don't think about everything that's going into my mouth, i manage to eat the house because i have a tendency to nibble while i'm doing just about anything sedentary like reading, watching tv, playing on the computer, etc. i'm also a very emotional eater. when i'm stressed or upset... i don't go for the bottle of burbon, or a pack of smokes, or any kind of drugs... i find solace at the bottom of a pint of ben and jerry's. being distracted from my focus on calorie intake is what caused the weight to go up. i think you hit the nail on the head!
having lost the weight before, though, gives a slight advantage... you know what works! good luck
The Three D's of a Regain
