Why on earth are there so many people who like to throw sand on other people's success?

There's an acquaintance of mine that I see once every few weeks. So, we were talking last week about my success with South Beach Diet, and she was like "you look awesome...but you should know, i have a lot of friends who went on 'those low carb diets' and the second they start eating 'normal' again, they overnight will gain back all the weight, plus."

well, duh. if you are eating healthy and then stop, of course you will gain the weight. and south beach isn't a atkins-type low carb diet anyway (but good luck explaining that to people, lol).

but lets just say all of what she was saying was valid...is it even possible to like immediately gain weight back? i mean, even if someone was to go wild and start eating cookies and cake and pasta every day, i'm sure it'd be a pound or two at a time, not just like an instant relapse.

i lost over 40 pounds in under six months, so i harbor a fear that i could gain it back in half that time...the iota of a fear it could happen even faster is enough to potentially keep me up at night...a fear i don't need when i'm finally pretty much at my goal and trying to allow myself to treat now and then.

The hardest thing about weight loss is all the head stuff that goes on (I and many others on here call it the Inner Fat Chick). You know now what it takes to lose the weight, and you will learn how to maintain, and you have the maintainers forum and the stunning ladies there to help you. It's not to early to pop your head in the door and get to know them.

Your not going to gain your weight back over night, but without vigilence once maintaining, it can go on alarmingly quickly. Not overnight, not even a month - it all depends just how many calories you are overeating compared with what you are expending. That's why we're not on diets (regardless of the names we give them) we're on healthy eating plans for life. You will never be off the Beach, you might sit in the paviliion in the shade on the odd days, or for the odd meals, but then you will have to get your backside straight onto the sand again!!!

And that's what it will take. Once we lose the weight, nothing changes much. The odd treat can become a little more regular, but our losing lifestyle needs to remain. That's the second hardest thing of this journey, not only do you have your own internal sabotuer telling you you won't make it (as well as external ones like your friend) but the prospect that this journey only has a beginning and a middle..............and no end.

that's actually exactly my fear - that it will be easier to gain than it was pre-diet..for several reasons:

first of all, pre diet i was always fluctuating between 165 and 175 pounds...at that time, i ate tons of crap, dessert all the time, etc..and i never left that weight range. (i was actually between a size 12 and 14 since high school till six months ago, i'm 26 years old.) i just decided to go on a diet because i knew i wasn't at a healthy weight for myself or my longterm wellbeing, but i wasn't currently gaining. (i might be explaning things wrong, but i think you'll get what i mean)

now, though, i'm 123 pounds. and i realize that, regardless of what lifestyle we are on, lower weights require less food to maintain, so i could never go back to the way i was eating before, the weight would come back...but i'm afraid just eating slightly more (like if i was to instance, consider myself in moderation, and start having a second helping of those turkey meatballs and whole wheat pasta, or allow myself two cookies as an occassional treat instead of one, etc), that the weight would pop back in a matter of weeks.

that, and i do wonder - for us SBers, if we were to go to some sort of massive random off-limits food buffet, and eat the same exact stuff as someone not on our way of life...would we gain weight faster than they would? it seems that's the general belief, that low carb (or adjusted carbers)'s bodies just go haywire when confronted with carbs or sugar, etc

Actually, that IS a possibility, but less of a possibility for SB than for something more radical like Atkins I think. Here's why: First, when you eat carbohydrates, that gives your body more material to store as glycogen in your muscles. The glycogen weighs something, as does the water it's packed with. So, while that's not fat weight, it will make the scale go up. (This is the reverse of the "water weight" loss that happens when people start a diet -- your body burns some of the glycogen in lieu of the missing dietary carbohydrate, and thus that AND the accompanying water loss show up on the scale.) Another thing that can happen is that low-carbers are more prone to muscle tissue loss than other dieters. The less muscle you have, the lower your metabolism. This means that it takes FEWER calories to gain weight than it did before. Finally, I think that usually if a person is binging on carbohydrates they are binging overall, and consuming a HUGE amount of calories. Face it, most of the carbohydrates we would overeat in a situation like that go down VERY easy and it's easy to eat a lot in a short space of time. They are also usually packed with fat calories, too. Eating a single piece of cake in the course of a week isn't going to do any damage, but going back to previous high-starch, high-fat eating will.

I'm on a high-carb plan, and I've seen a lot of people who came to this plan after being on a low-carb one. Almost to a person they either did not lose anything or even gained the first few weeks, even though they were consuming the same or fewer calories. It's not that "carbs make you fat" but that the side effects of low-carb meant that the scale didn't respond as expected for a while.

So, the fact that you are on SB means you're not totally carbohydrate starved so any effects like this would be minimal. But, I know that, even though I'm not a low-carber and I am active, etc., it's very very easy for me to gain weight, and very very hard to lose it again. It's easy to see where it can snowball and get out of hand almost before you realize it. Of course I've lost a LOT more weight than you and those of us who have had serious obesity problems are more prone to this. Still, you can't get complacent. That says NOTHING about your smarts and determination, it sounds like you know the score. Losing isn't magic, neither is regaining; you just have to know that going in.