So I was doing well with my goals and weight loss, i was down to 169 which was the lowest I've been in years. then my mother became very Ill and I got a huge promotion at work which is a lot of stress. I am definitely a stress/emotional eater. I could feel myself losing control but could not do anything about it. I started to binge and gain back up to 215 in less than 6 months. Now I am facing health problems with my blood pressure and still can not get motivated. i do fine for a few days and then back off the wagon I go. I know that sugar is a big issue because that is what I give into and binge on. What are some things you have done to get motivated and work threw the stress/emotional eating?

I quit dieting for six months and gained 14 pounds. I'd been doing it for like 2 years and I'd had enough. Plus, the weight loss had slowed to a crawl. Like, just not happening. I had to starve to get anything off.

My doctor was all over this weight loss thing since I know him personally as well as being his patient and he got really involved. He's kind of good and high up in his field, so when he calls people, they call back. He made some calls, which benefitted me, but also because he's personally interested.

Big time weight loss experts are in agreement that when you have a great deal to lose, at some point, there are plateaus. They suggested trying six months of dieting rotated with six months of maintaining. I rejected that idea and continued to struggle until it was just too much, at which point I decided, "Okay, six months off sounds good." I wasn't getting anywhere, anyway.

But I didn't maintain. I went crazy and ate cakes and cookies like the world was about to end. UP fourteen pounds.

When I started trying to lose again, I failed. I kept making cakes, usually in the evenings. And cookies. I didn't gain because I was alternating eating well with pigging out, so I stayed in one place for like six weeks.

For me, it takes about four full days of being back in the swing to be able to make a go of it. I tried four days, but made it three. Tried four, made it one. Tried four, made it three and a half. Then I tried four and made it.

It's all mental. Do I want to eat yummy treats or do I want to lose weight? It takes a while to get the will and determination to catch up to the desire to lose. But they caught up and blew past and m back in the swing.

So, short answer: I kept trying.

The weight has been coming off a lot like it did when I first started at around 250. A decent pace. Nothing like when I'd stopped losing because it wouldn't budge.

While it's no fun knowing I'm losing pounds I'd already lost, I'm not that sorry about it. I got a nice idea on how to (or How Not to) go off a diet. It was a good (and YUMMY) six months. I needed the mental break and maybe my body needed the physical one. It certainly seems to know how to lose again!

It's been about a month of losing again. It's fun again.

I think there might be something to the metabolism reacting to intake.

Don't give up. If you really want to start losing again, you will!!

I truly feel for you knowing I was way up on the scale. I began anew on Christmas Eve morning and never looked back. I started at 282 lbs and got down to 244.2 recently 3 weeks ago. I got sick with a flu like upper resp infection along with many of my co-workers and I gained up to 254.5. I lost it in a week with the exception of 0.3 lb. I had gone off my Program for 2 weeks, went on a calorie controlled diet for a week 1500-1600 cals/day eating sensibly and that was the ticket.
I am keeping my New Years Resolution of no sodas and no sweets. I gained that weight on soups that were too salty and foods like noodles and bread. I also had some fast food and it wasn't a good thing to do but I knew I had better eat and restart back again.
So one thing I want to say is that I'm a Travel Nurse. I work with foods out in restaurant,some prepared foods from the grocery store like rotisserie chicken and I have my trusty slow cooker which makes great meals as well.
If I was home in my house I would be enjoying a bunch of meals from the broiler including shish kebab and just baked chicken,lean meat loaf and weather permitting use the bbq.
Go lighter on carbs and heavier on protein. I went on a Weight Watcher Program that has no counting called Simply Filling and lost like crazy. I am on it today with a big salad,rotisserie chicken,some canned,drained corn,probably 1/4 cup,blueberries and 50 cals. of Athenos Greek dressing.
I am back to eating more salads and by the way I'm a night shifter so what I want to do is eat and get comfortably full and eat very healthy.
So what I've learned is that if you have a regain, some of it will come off quickly and then losses will slow down.
What you want to do is this...

Do eat what helps ypu lose the weight. The foods you especially enjoy should draw you into the mindset. I know if I make a chicken curry I will stay put on my Program because I love the stuff and also I want to eat it because of taste and so I fashion the rest of the day accordingly.
I bribe myself with next week. I love seafood. Get a loss,stay on my Plan and at the end of the week I have a nice seafood dinner on my Program and definitely working for me in the right direction.
Next, no pity parties. You were down to the 160's. Raise the bar and restart back. Unemotionally,restart and enjoy the week. At the end of it step on the scale because you should do well if you stuck to it.
Resist outside temptation. I know that last night they had pizza in the Nurse's station. I had none. I refused chicken they had and other foods. Why??? Simple. I didn't account for it and didn't want to let go of the day. I know if I keep at it I will succeed and you know that you will,too.

Well right now, when I want something sweet I get some fruit instead. I don't buy a lot of fruit, because it's expensive, so I make it a treat. I just had some strawberries as dessert after dinner. I've never been a dessert person, so it was sort of nice.

I've also started pre-making/packing my meals because I hate how long food prep takes which makes me want to choose the more convenient, less healthy option in the moment. So maybe you can shop for the week or a few days and pre-make all of your meals so when you are stressed you can just grab a pre-portioned plate of something or a baggie of strawberries, whatever you like to munch on. Popsicles are nice too, because for me I have very sensitive teeth, so it's sweet but I never have more than one because it's very cold, lol.

My signature quote is helping me: "A year from now, what will I wish I had done today?" I too gained my weight back and MORE! Now, whenever I think about doing something I know I shouldn't do, like not exercise or eat forbidden cake, I think of that quote, think about where I would have been if I hadn't gone off my diet, and think about where I really want to be a year from now. I don't want to keep making the same mistakes. You are ahead. You haven't gained all your weight back. So think about it. A year from now, what will you wish you had done TODAY? What you do today will determine where you are a year from now. Get back to it and good luck!

Hi there!

I haven't been back on this forum since I gained a lot of my weight back. After someone I loved died I just stopped caring about a lot of things, including my health. That's not fair to the person I lost. Or myself.

Anyways, I am ready to get back to my goal weight and maybe then some. Lots of luck and love to you!

Hep that is pretty much me. Even the low.... I just went all the way up to 263.9.

My journey 2011/2012 from 255 to 169
2014 I gained up to 249
2014 I got down to 208 and then I started a full time job after being a stay at home mom. I went from 208 to 263.9 in 10 months. And I have sugar issues.

I just had to tell myself after months of dragging my feet. "Today I will eat low carb." And then I did.

9 days later and I still am and I'm down 9 pounds and I'm not hungry and I feel better. Simple carbs are my nemesis and I get derailed by late fall/winter/early spring as I suffer from SAD. now I'm trying to nip that in the bud to stop the pattern of self destruction.

Buy big bags of frozen fruit. They like to jumble the prices in the store so that you have to do some math to see which bags are cheaper, but you can get fruit pretty cheap. A bowl of berries and a couple eggs is always my cheapest meal of the day.

What are you buying that's more convenient and cheaper?

What if it's not you that failed? What if it's dieting that's failed? We get these sorts of stories on this site on a daily basis. People think they fail at their diets but I really don't think that's true. Diets fail, they all fail. We really shouldn't need motivation to lose weight, nobody has more motivation to lose weight than an overweight person! It does not require motivation at all so quit trying to come up with inspiration everyday because there will always be good days, bad days, happy days, and frustrating days no matter how much you try to pump yourself up.

I'm not an expert on weightloss! I've only lost 20lbs in the last year. But unlike any other weightloss before that (the kind where you gain and lose and gain and lose) I've been able to keep it off. So far this is my largest triumph in weightloss, keeping it off!

There is a lot of evidence that the constant losing and regaining that dieters do is more harmful to our bodies and our metabolism than being steadily overweight. Most dieters sense this when they reminisce about how much easier it felt to lose weight in the past - that's because the more yoyoing you do the more your metabolism gets screwy and gets in the way of weightloss.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that you don't need to go on a strict diet to lose weight. In fact I think that diets are actually the cause of weight gain, especially regain!! It's not hard to witness since everyone I know who diets regains. Diets impose a volatile relationship with food which makes it hard to think clearly around food. This is especially evident in the low carb trend, the more you try to stay away from it the more likely you are to go back to it and fall into binges. Don't get me wrong, any weightloss I have I attribute to keeping my carb portions small! But you'll get nowhere if you ban this food or that food. Your body wants what you tell it it can't have, hence the binges!

Just be kind to yourself, there is no need to punish yourself over weight gain, food is not the enemy, and you've done nothing wrong! You might be eating for reasons other than hunger and that's ok, there are ways to calm that illusionary hunger and find a healthy relationship with food.

I pretty much disagree with everything said here.

Everyone needs to find the way of eating that works for them. It's not that diets fail, it is that some diets are harder to stick to than others AND people have triggers that make them not care about weight loss either temporarily or permanently.

In my opinion, weight loss is 90% in the head and 10% everything else. Those of us who are obese (not just a little pudgy, but really obese) didn't get that way simply by overeating. We saw our pants got tight and instead of eating less and moving more, we kept on eating and bought bigger pants. There were THINGS that made us not care about our size, our health and how we looked. NOT ALL OF US (some of it is medical) but MOST OF US.

And I 100% disagree about low carb dieting. It's not eating low carb that makes us want to binge on sugar, it's that something triggers us and we don't care about our weight/health and we give into sugar cravings and then just "give up". Not because of the diet, but because of our head being in a bad place. AND... those of us who have sugar/carb addictions (and it is real - believe me) find it extremely difficult to going back to low carb because we are addicted - like giving up cigarettes, then going back on.... that much harder to quit again.

And lastly, I have yo-yoed the last 3 years. I lost 90 pounds in 2011-2012, then from 2013 to now I have gained and lost over and over again - big chunks of weight either way. Now I'm going down again. Sure, Yo-yoing is not good for my body (but it is worse to say obese than to yo-yo) but it has absolutely NOT affected how fast I lose. Actually, I lose FASTER now because I know what works for me where the first time through I was still figuring that all out.

Now, I could blame my weight gain to my diet - if I can't keep it off, then something is wrong with how I'm eating, right? It's a conclusion that would be easy to leap to. But I also know it wasn't the diet. After YEARS of yo-yoing and trying different things with weight loss and eventually gaining, I have figured out that beyond my carb addiction I have SAD and one of my ways of coping with ALWAYS feeling sluggish and depressed is to medicate it with food. Not just any food, but high carb foods. And then I can't stop because of the addiction. 6 of the 8 times I've lost weight, I've gotten derailed during the winter months. And 1 of those remaining 8 times I got partially derailed and fought tooth and nail and was miserable. The ONLY time I have been able to stick to sane eating in winter was the winter of 2011 when I was basically told I was a health disaster and it shocked me into action (turns out it was 90% my thyroid).

So, I am returning to my plan of eating that works for me all months sans late octuber through early April. For those months I will go on an antidepressant and sit under a SAD light and see if it helps. Now that I'm AWARE of the trigger, I can work on not getting TRIGGERED!!! As during those months? I simply do not care - at all. I just want to eat and it feels good to eat - even though everything else feels awful.

You disagree that Im trying to support the OP? Or that there will always be good and bad days regardless of motivation? Or you disagree that I don't think anyone needs to punish themselves over weight gain? Or that it's important to be kind to oneself rather than punitive? Or do you disagree that diets have a 95% failure rate? Diets are not vaccines, if diets worked then why are all dieters re gaining weight rather than losing?

What's the point of "knowing how to lose weight?" We all know how to lose weight. Keeping it off is where the truth matters. I've lost weight on diets too. I've never kept it off.... have you?

I told you what I disagreed with. I disagree with your comments about yo-yoing is worse than staying overweight. I disagree about your comments about low carb diet plans.

I don't find your post supporting the OP, but discrediting how many people go about changing their lives.

And you kept 20 pounds off for a year. That is great. I kept nearly 100 pounds off for 2 years... yet gained it back. It wasn't the diet that failed me. My diet and exercise routine was spot on great. My brain chemicals failed me as I struggled with depression and basically said "good riddance" to EVERYTHING good for me. It had nothing to do with how I was eating or how I was exercising and everything to do with how I stopped caring about myself because of depression - and for me it's cyclical SAD related.

Trying a new method of losing weight will not help me keep it off. Fixing my HEAD will.

owensmommy4, I hope things are starting to settle down for you! Something that might help you through a stressful time is something I read about on another thread, guided imagery & positive affirmations by Belleruth Naperstek. Healthjourneys.com.

I have found over the years that sweets are a huge problem for me. There are not enough pastries on the planet to satisfy my desire. If I eat as much as want, I just want more. On the other hand, if I leave them out of my diet, I stop craving them and a piece of fruit satisfies any desire for something sweet. I'm not absolutely 100% strict --more like 95%. I avoid processed foods like store-bought salad dressing that contain sugar. I still sometimes resort to food for comfort, etc., but have lost the desire for sweets. My body feels much better without sugar, especially my joints.

Sending you good wishes!

I agree 100% about yoyoing, finding what works, brain chemistry & addiction, well, pretty much your entire post.
I am planning for this coming winter, too. I bought a SAD light that had worked really well when I trialed it. Then I developed dry eyes over the summer and needed to get that under control before using the light. This yr I will deploy the light in late August. As for food, I'm toying with upping carbs in the winter, but strictly non-triggering ones, like yams, maybe quinoa, both of which are completely addiction-neutral foods for me.

Thank you all for the support. i really need it! i do feel that some of it is brain chemistry or addiction. i can be doing fine and then eat something sweet and then its like i cant stop eating it. its the same if i eat fast food or pizza, then i want sweets and to eat badly. i feel awful when i eat that way and i have gotten so out of shape that its misery to exercise now. i feel like i cant put myself first for any amount of time because i have so much and so many to take care of that there is not enough time in the day or enough of me to go around. also, some days i'm just to tired or too lazy to give any effort to it. my mother became sick from something that no matter how well she took care of herself she still became sick. so then i think why bother to be healthy if you can still become sick. i have recently started antidepressants and that has helped with some things, but not the eating/binges. though i haven't had the binges as frequently. i do think some of it is in "my head". thank you all for the encouraging words and different perspectives!

Hang in there owensmommy You have a LOT to deal with! hope you can steal a few moment to check in here--it can really help. As for eating healthy, you're right, it's no guarantee of good health, but eating unhealthy IS a pretty sure way to become unhealthy over time. When I get lost in sugar & junk food mode, it helps to gently move out of it. I eat as much as I feel I need, whether it's for hunger of comfort, but no junk, just good stuff. Much easier to get back to feeling in control that way, even while in high stress mode.