It took a lot of courage to post your struggle JayEll. I think most of us have been/are there :o.

The motivation to keep at it is the hardest part of maintaining.

:hug:

Dagmar

Jay - I always look forward to your posts. When I see your name, I always read it because you are *real*, you share your honest heart. We all can feel and know this real person in real joy or (as now) in pain. :hug:This courageous sharing is a rare and beautiful gift you give the rest of us, so thank you.

Perhaps you should just maintain your current weight for awhile to give you a feeling of control. Stop the stress. Love your body as it is. Then, when you are calm weeks or months down the road, start again. (Caveat: this advice from someone who is nowhere near goal. Just a thought about what I might do in your situation.)

Thank you ALL for your kind comments! :hug:

Ennay, wow, I feel you! I can tell you are as stymied as I am. I can't imagine the effort involved in training for a marathon! And how crazy to gain weight at the same time... :crazy:

bargoo, I wasn't clear. 2000 is not my maintenance level. Most of the calculators put it at 1700-1800, but from experience I know that 1500-1600 is more like it. If I go above 1600 consistently, I seem to gain. I just mentioned 2000 because that's the "average" one-size-fits-all calorie number, and I rarely go above it. But obviously I don't have to.

LisaMarie71, good to "see" you again. Good luck with your plan!

BillBlueEyes, thanks for the encouragement.

I'm not listing everyone who replied individually, but please know that I read every one of your comments and appreciate your kindness.

Jay

Oh, I think of you as my hero!!! You STOPPED now and came clean. That is maintaining in my book. I lost a lot of weight in 2005 (went from 223 to 147). Maintained for a bit. Added a couple of pounds (20) in 2006 and then 20 more in 2007 and then.....back to 230 ish in 2010!!! I NEVER thought that I'd reagain the weight. I was wearing 8's for heaven's sake!!! And I finally felt like me. Now, back into 22's and I don't feel like me. I gave up. I know that. I was looking for food and exercise to be on the back burner so I could get on with my life. I now know that it needs to always be on the front burner...as I put my marriage and my children!!! Constantly tended to. Now, I'm on my way back down again....fast and furious isn't my mission today. It's lifestyle changes that will stick with me. Being more active in general..not just when I'm working out. So...thanks for sharing. And congrats on catching yourself now.

Hugs & Support
 

Hi Jay:

I am sending cyber hugs and support your way. I have been down this path more times than I want to remember during this 18 years road trip. I have lost 130 pounds, from my highest weight. I have had years that the scale showed a forty pounds gain. I was still on plan 80% of the time.
What has helped me is the realization that I am "different" now. It doesn't take much to tip the scales up but it takes much more to tip them back down.
It is not a failure on my part its just being "different". "Some Answers About Genes, Environment, Obesity and Maintenance" has been my salvation. That post has softened my pain many times, and it is painful to know that I am putting in so much and still struggling. The part about it not being fair is valid, but out of my control, so I acknowledge and accept that it isn't fair but its my reality now. My calories should equal weight loss, my exercise should equal weight loss but with my new "super" gene's they equal weight maintence.

I hope that you feel better reading this. Please read the post. Jay, you are an inspiration to many. Failure is not getting up again after a fall, I know that there is no way to keep you down. So here is a hand to help you up.

Jay, I cannot tell you how some aspects of your post struck home with me. Three weeks OP, then I slip, and regain any weight I might have lost plus more. The difference with me is that I do know I'm eating too much, some of the time, but can't seem to stop. I am frustrated but can understand why your frustration is much greater than mine. I can't seem to control myself, you seem quite under control but it's still not working.

You mention food and exercise. How about non-f&e factors - stress? sleep? water intake? stress? Have you had your thyroid levels tested and a general physical?

I don't know what words of wisdom I can offer you, but I just wanted to give you a big :hug: and let you know you're not alone. I am also frustrated with myself but although I might need to change my "loss" methods, I keep trying, keep posting here, b/c I know if I didn't it would be a lot worse! Please keep posting. :grouphug:

Been there honey, currently starting again. :( We can do it :)

Jay, you're one of the people who post here whom I feel as if I "know," as if I actually pass by you daily at the large company where I work, only we haven't spoken yet & only know each other through e-mail. That's how familiar you seem to me from your various posts & your distinctive "voice" online. So such an honest admission from you hits me like any cry from the heart.

What do you think is going on here? Do you think it's a physical thing you're fighting, like a shift in your metabolism? Or do you think it's a mental thing? Is it weariness or anger? Or a combination of both?

I have fears for my own maintenance project, which has turned into a fight against what is still a slight regain. I fear weariness at the constant vigilance. And my REALLY great fear is this: Is long-term maintenance equal to deliberately cultivating a mild eating disorder? That is, does it really require exhibiting mildly disordered eating behavior, by which I mean, more preoccupation with & restriction of food than occurs among most people who've never been overweight? Not bingeing & purging behavior, which most people connect with eating disorders, but the mindset of constant regulation? This I worry about. And no amount of positive thinking language can turn me away from this stark fact.

Which, I fear, I am now projecting upon you. But I really do want to know, as you explore the "why," what your findings are.

Maybe we should never mind about the "why" for now. It's significant that you chose to post this. Also, I am another of those who think you're brave for putting this out there, and now I admire you even more for your honesty. Here we all are on the Internet & no one can see us & we could hypothetically carry on as though everything was okay, just to remain part of the community & to avoid "rocking the boat" with any news from the maintenance front that is not completely upbeat. But what would the use be for ourselves, really? To me, saying upfront that you're struggling means you are really going to "work" the support systems here again, and re-engage. It means getting something back for yourself. Which you deserve, since you give so much to others here. Now it's time to get some back.

[Hope this all made sense. Need more coffee, after a three-day weekend.]

ETA: How could I forget to say this? I, too, think you can do this again. But probably you'll have to do it a little differently. What that different way might be, I don't know. But it probably means blowing up some railway tracks that you're used to traveling along & forging a completely new path.

Jay, you can't be so hard on yourself! I did the same thing. I was overweight and worked really hard to get down to 138. I was so happy at that weight and just knew I would never go back. Then I got married and started cooking all kinds of sweet treats for my husband. The weight came back and then some. I'm now losing this weight again and hopefully I have learned my lesson about maintenance! We can both do this! I know we can!

Oh Jay, it hurt me reading your post. You sounded so sad and defeated. Like others have said, I look for your posts in threads because you are so open and honest, and have a very no-nonsense view of the world. I enjoy your humor and I always respect and appreciate your opinion. I read the things you say and often think to myself 'that is how I want to be able to respond in a situation like this', I see a lot of characteristics in your expression that I try to emulate in my own life.

You are not a failure, not at all. You are finding your path is all. The fact that you were able to put all of this out there says that you have the strength to recover and get back to a place where you feel happy and healthy. That isn't failing, that is its own success.

As we age I think that we have to adjust the way we do things. What worked for us before might not work today, exercises that were effective in the past might do more harm than good at this point, etc. You will find what you need to do now. It might be dramatically different than what you had to do to lose originally. You may also find that you are happier at a higher weight than your original goal, I don't know. Once you get there, you will readjust your maintenance to what is required then. I know you will.

:hug:

I'm so sorry you are feeling this kind of despair. I try to remind myself that when I can't imagine a way out, that does not mean there isn't a way out. It's just a description of how you feel right now, the state of things. It doesn't have to be your reality, trapped, and sad. Seeing a CBT therapist helped me see possibilities in my life I never could imagine. Anything that helps you take a step back and see the patterns rather than being in them can help.

Because of dieting culture, the subtle cues we get from everything we see and hear about weightloss and how it's done, any gain is seen as "failure," to the point that it's almost customary to regain all of the weight (and then some), before trying again.

You aren't starting over, and you haven't failed completely, and you certainly aren't a failure.

If you were the patient of a bariatric doctor or surgeon, he or she would still count you as one of his/her success stories. Maintaining any of the original weight loss is counted as success, not failure.

The medical community sees you as a success, partial success, but success nonetheless.

Success and failure aren't ever objective. It's not success or failure, but feelings of each that effect behavior. Feelings of success motivate. Feelings of failure demotivate. See and acknowledge your success and build on it.

You don't have to gain it all back in order to get back on track. I know you know that, but it's not stopping you from feeling like you're back at square one - but you're not, you're not starting over.

The fact is even if you gained it all back you're not starting over. When I created my 3FC blog, I titled it Starting Over, Take 1,847 (based on the fact that for more than 35 years I "started over" virtually every Monday of all those years). I regret that title, because I am not, and never have started over. Every failed attempt taught me lessons that should have made the next attempt more successful. It didn't because I had the "starting over" mindset. I didn't really learn from the mistakes, because I didn't realize how much I could have. I always felt like I was returning to square one. I was wrong.

The best analogy is the story about Thomas Edison on the topic of failure (there are dozens if not hundreds of versions of this story, but this is one I like):


After Thomas Edison’s seven-hundredth unsuccessful attempt to invent electric light, he was asked by a New York Times reporter, “How does it feel to have failed seven hundred times?” The great inventor responded, “I have not failed seven hundred times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those seven hundred ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.” Several thousand more of these successes followed, but Edison finally found the one that would work, and invented the electric light. Failure is an attitude, not an outcome.

What a great post kaplods - and what a great quote. Like many here, I've lost and gained weight more times than I can count. I started lurking here in the maintainers forum when I was still ~80 pounds from goal (I'm still not there but closer now). I knew that I *knew* how to lose weight but that I'd eliminated a whole bunch of ways to maintain. :) (That really sounds so much nicer than failed - but it is true, because now I DO know so many ways that don't work for me.)

It took a lot of courage to make this post, JayEll - and like many of your posts, it has helped folks here by making us feel not quite as alone and sparking some great dialogue.

*hugs*

I rated this thread 5 stars... and I'm coming back to study it again tonight. In my years of dieting, I've found losing the initial weight easy, but keeping it off is very difficult (at least for me.)

I both look forward to hitting goal again, and dread it. I can imagine that I will have to be an obsessive food tracker to keep at goal this time, heh... Not something I look forward to, but the alternative of obesity is worse.