Yup, what she said. Except the part about reaching a goal - I don't seem to remember ever actually doing that.

I also realized how much I tied food in with my emotions. Emotional eating was a way of life for me. I ate because I was happy, sad, frustrated, stressed, tired... you name it. It took a lot of work for me to recognize when I was doing that, and even more work to reprogram myself so that I don't reach for food for comfort. I still struggle with this sometimes, especially when I'm stressed out, but it's a lot easier now. (These days I like to remind myself that the only problem food can solve is hunger.) What gave me the most help on fixing this, especially at the beginning, was Geneen Roth's books. "When Food is Love" and "Breaking Free from Emotional Eating" really changed the way I thought about myself and about food. It wasn't as easy as simply reading them (I wish!) but they gave me the tools to get started.

In past years, after successfully dieting I would lose focus and go "off my diet", quit exercising and eventually put it all back on plus. My last weight loss was 80 lbs between 1/2006 and the fall of 2007and I'm am pleased to say that even though I had lost some of my focus I was still mindfull of what I was eating and exercising almost daily. But I allowed myself to be tempted, way too often, by sweets and other things I should not have been eating so much of. Always telling myself that I will go back on plan on Monday. And I tried to get back on plan many, many Mondays, never staying focused through the week. I finally told myself that I would do it after the first of the year. At the begining of this year I was 27 lbs heavier than I was in the fall of 2007. So far, thank goodness, it seems to be working, I've been doing very well staying on program, exercising daily and I feel like I have my head in the right place.

Well, I got down to 145 from 170 for my wedding. Within two years I was at 196 (just a little over a year ago) got down to 186, now I'm 210.

Why did I regain the weight? Because I stopped. I kept thinking that there were just tooi many things going on and life was too hectic. Or there was this special event or that special event and I'd pull it back together. Or I was in a bad mood so I'd skip a couple workouts. Or eat a doughnut. Or two!

In the end I've come to realize that I have to just keep going. If I wait for life to be less stressul, it won't be. Or to not have any special events or occasions or reasons to eat out. I can't wait for anything, or press pause, or whatever. Regardless of if I want to, or feel like it, or am too tired, or sore, or had a bad day, Ihave to keep working on it. And the more that I allow myself to "take a break" and soothe a bad day with food, the more I'm reinforcing my body's idea that food fixes things.

But now I'm convincing myself that this is just something I do- like clean my house, or pay bills, or watch TV, or do laundry. This is just a part of daily life, and that's not going to change.

I'm 20 pounds UP from my lowest weight of 130

20 pounds.

I maintained between 135-142 for almost 4 years. Since August (my wedding), something switched and I gained 12 pounds.

Why?
I decided that going to the gym and doing a half a**ed workout out sporadically was enough.

I decided that I could get away with eating take out 5 nights a week.

I decided that half a bottle of wine every night wasn't "that big of a deal".

I decided to NOT weigh myself unless I felt sure I would get a number I was satisfied with (so really, I didn't weigh at all anymore).

So I'm unraveling 4 years of hard work in 4 months because I decided to stop caring.

Hopefully, I can undo the damage and put my life back into focus.

I know you can, Junebug. How can we help?

? ? Both?

I was about 211 in my senior year of high school, lost maybe 15 or so due to the lifestyle (schedule, less free time to get bored and eat) change that happened when I finished HS and started taking classes in community college while still living at home. When I went away to school and lived in a dorm, I dropped down to 175 without even thinking about it, probably due to the enormous amount of walking I was doing and a commitment to drink only water. My mom made me promise to drink water or milk at at least two meals a day, rather than soda, and I took it a step further for the first semester.

During the summer between the first and second year of college (I only went for an Associate's), I got a job at Burger King, which was kind of dumb. I really should have tried to get a job at a restaurant whose food I didn't like. Dang chicken nuggets and onion rings. I gained 40 pounds back with a quickness. It was bad.

After college, still fluctuating between 200-220, I moved away from home to NC, where I got a job making the kind of money that allows a lazy, homesick person to indulge in the ease and comfort of fast food as often as twice a day (although I managed not to do that very much). Before I knew it, I weighed 248. I don't know what I was thinking, but I didn't do anything about it until recently, when an unpleasant experience with a scale revealed my weight to be 276. I've lost a few, not much, as you can see from my little sidebar thing here (I haven't been here long enough for a ticker), but I have a long journey ahead of me.

I know I went right back up when I quit putting "being on plan" at the top of my list. It is just way too easy to put everyone else's needs first, to get overwhelmed with everything else going on, and getting lazy. All of a "sudden", I'm off plan and the weight just comes right back on.

Hmm... I'm going with option . That's what seems to be working for me. I fit into NONE of my pants and facing reality has really helped. I weigh every single morning and that has really lit a fire under my arse.

So, no more scale collecting dust and no more telling myself that I'm only wearing one pair of jeans because they're "my favorites". I've also had to wake up to the fact that going to the gym for 1 week and taking a week and a half off does not a gym goer make.

I HATE excuses more than anything and now I know why- they make you fat.

I have had to face it and that seems to be doing the trick. I was so very afraid, so no coddling this girl!

I gained weight in 2008, because I let myself slack off. I had surgery in May and it was a downward spiral from there on out. I allowed myself to have one slice of pizza, a few chips, a bowl of ice cream, but once I would get started, I couldnt stop. I also stopped exercising. I was down to 236 from 307 and found myself back up to 265.

for me it was just one weekend that went off track... that turned into a week... then into months. i was seeing myself lose weight and i wasn't miserable doing it, i was very proud of myself, then i just started giving up.

i think i have a bit of a problem with self-destruction. even when i see i am doing well, i start to pull away.

it also didn't help that i was still in college and my roommates and friends liked to go out for midnight donut runs and out to dinner. this time around my fiance is working with me to do this (he's in the same position i am) and we are going to support each other instead of enable each other.

I lost 50lbs a few years ago, was about 10lbs from goal, was so sick of my very restrictive diet and crazy exercise, I decided to take a short break from it. Since I felt so deprived, and this was just a little holiday, I ate everything in sight. Of course the weight came back. I gained quickly, but just kept on eating, planning on getting back to dieting soon. Let out the seams on clothes that I had taken in, now they were loose, so I ate until they were tight again. I refuse to repeat this pattern, Like others have said, it has to be a lifestyle, not something you go on until the weight is gone. My idea of maintenence was gain 5lbs, then take it off, repeat. except I never did. I made so may bad choices. This time I am being sane about it.

I think my whole yo-yo dieting thing is directly related to my newly diagnosed anxiety disorder. My Dr. seems to think I've had it for a very long time. Probably since the time I started self medicating with food at the age of 5. Later I added to the self medication with nicotine, later alcohol. All in attempt to make the anxiety go away. And it worked for a while. Funnily I've always been anti-drug...I knew how to cure myself....EAT, Drink and be merry. My views on prescription drugs are changing some now.

I found that once I quit drinking, smoking, and lost 140 pound I was having constant anxiety, it is truly debilitating...to the degree of ER visits and near fainting. Most people would have felt better after acomplising what I have, but I felt worse. Looking back, and reading bits and pieces of an old journal, I am positive that is what happened to me in the past. I just couldn't take the chronic anxiety any longer, the only thing that made me feel better...(or not feel worse) was food, nicotine, and alcohol in that order.

well for me, it was kinda a warped mind frame....

I went through I, I was about 240 at age 16, lost 100pounds in 6 months with WW....then went to uni and entered a very dark time period, now I understand that was depression, but I think I put weight back on simply because I didn't want to know I was.

I lost 83 pounds once, to my maintenance weight of 180. Then I found myself in a relationship that took a horrible, painful, abusive turn, and I methodically gained 114 pounds.

Why did I turn to food? Food was there, it was available. I didn't have to justify it, I didn't have to explain things to it, I didn't have to try to understand it. It was comforting. It was also something I could tell myself I was "focusing" on, and keep me distracted from what was really going on--keep me in denial. It's not any wonder I never lost through those years. If I had lost, then I would have taken the veil off my eyes. And I obviously wasn't ready to do that.

When I started losing this time was when I finally WOKE UP and said no more. When I finally started fighting for myself. When I finally started really taking care of myself, rather than trying to take care of myself with food. That's when I didn't need the food anymore. I'm still working on it, and still trying to excise and heal deep, dark hurts. But I'm doing it, gradually.

So why did I regain? I guess it boils down to emotional eating. Really, though, what I was doing was using food for something that's not supposed to do. Food is fuel. Food is sustenance. Food is not your friend, it is not your companion, it is not your saviour. Keep food in its place.

Thanks everyone for sharing your thoughts. It's pretty fascinating how the vast majority of regains seem to occur because we lose focus -- even after years of maintainence. I like Susan's analogy with the car. It's just kind of exhausting to think that we will have to keep our eyes on the road forever. Even though I think I've "redefined normal" for about a year now -- the new "normal" can still slip away without constant vigilance. That's what I think is the scariest thing of all.

Maybe there was never a "normal" way of eating. Even when we fall off plan, what feels like a constant "normal" way of eating might in reality be always accelerating into more and more dangerous territory.