I'm disappointed in myself today. I've been losing 3-5 lbs every week for the last few weeks. This past week I spent a lot of time socializing, going out for food and drinks, and I knew I overdid it. When I weighed in on Sunday I had gained two pounds from last week.

I find it hard balancing the desire to lose weight and get healthy with the desire to fulfill the emotional need to be social, and not just sit at home and be lonely.

Does anyone have any advice?

You're human, it WILL happen that you don't stay as perfectly on plan as you'd like. Find a way to deal with it now, so I doesnt derail you in the long term.

There are a couple of ways to handle the balance - some people allow slightly higher calories on the weekend and let during the week. Once a month fun meals where calories aren't counted, then get back on the horse. Some folks just accept slightly slower weight loss in exchange for maintaining their ability to eat out on the weekends. Still more just put themselves on social lockdown and keep their commitments to a minimum until they are better at resisting temptation, or can go out but only have water and diet soda to drink.

Pick a strategy, it doesn't matter which. Then you must decide to NOT live in the past with a failure or regret. Bad days WILL happen, even with the best laid plans. You don't dwell or get angry, but rather remember that this is a long term strategy and continuing on imperfectly is infinitely better than short and flawless efforts. No quitting, no recrimination, no guilt or disappointment. The ability to move on and not be dispirited with a slip up is key to maintenance. That doesn't mean we don't acknowledge we had a crap day, or that it doesn't frustrate us when the same thing trips us up over and over, but no dwelling on it and letting it drag us down. Move forward to the very next choice and make it a good one!

Honestly, it is all part of the weight management game. We have to take it in stride, correct our bearings and move on. There are sometimes going to be gains and maintains (those are good, though).

Part of the deal! No worries, get back on track and keep going! Woot!

Sorry I don't believe those things are mutually exclusive. You can be social and go out for eating/drinking you just have to learn to plan around it and practice moderation.

Calories matter.

For me... I found I was making the "going out to eat or for drinks" part, the main aspect of my social life... Everything that I did seemed to revolve around food... as in let's meet for drinks,then decide what we want to eat, then decide on a restaurant... And by the time the evening was over we wound up having drinks and something to eat at 2 or 3 different places...

Now I like to plan my evenings out around something other than just dinner, usually the theatre, but also art galleries or something like that... and I even meet friends once or twice a week and go for "social" run after work...

Don't get me wrong... I LOVE eating out with friends... for me it's actually one of life's great pleasures and it will always have a place in my life, but I've found a lot of other great "social" things to do well...

what I do is to plan the most important gathering for the week for me and attend those while I enjoy visiting and eating... I just try not to schedule more than 1 a week.

Eat BEFORE you go out and figure out low-cal options for snacks and drinks.

If there is music - shake your booty

I don't drink and I am very glad I don't, because I find it hard enough to stop myself from eating every crappy food I can find once I am out with friends. We socialize around food all the time, we go for dim sum and stuff our faces, have dinners out, or go to pubquizzes and have pub dinners.

What works for me is to plan ahead, if I know I will eat a meal out, I eat less for my other meals, save calories so to speak. For example today I knew I would have thai food with some friends after gym, so I had a very light breakfast and lunch. And I try to limit the amount of times I eat out without limiting the amount of time I see my friends, so if we are going to a pub, I can eat something before and then just have a diet soda there. Calories 0! If we are going for dim sum,I can just have a green salad for dinner.

Another option is to work harder those days, so if you know you will have a big meal out, why not exercise an extra 45 minutes? That way you will feel you earned it.

I don't believe in socialising less, because I feel that that is like a fad diet, at some point you will want to go back to regular socialising and then you will start eating more and gaining again. It is better to come up with strategies that work for you and allow for both, the weightloss and the social exchange!

For me, the key was finding patterns and situations that made me overeat, then figuring out coping mechanisms to help me deal with said patterns and situations. Realize that mistakes and setbacks will happen, and it's not the end of the world when they do, because it's all a learning process.

I personally keep a day planner in which I track everything from what I eat to my weekly weigh-in to my daily exercise. On bad weeks, I can look back and figure out what I should improve upon for the next week.

I can totally go out and be social, and still stay on plan. I just have to focus on friends, family, or the situation at hand rather than any feasts set out before me. It's now second-nature, but I spent a lot of time having little conversations with myself over how it's so much more important to me to have a healthier future rather than live in the moment and eat junk in amounts I'd later regret.