# Why it is so hard to maintain weight loss



## greentree (Feb 27, 2013)

Since I gave up most grains and sugar....I lost 32 lbs and have not had to worry about how much I eat; my body knows when to quit. I only eat when I am hungry. before, the scale only went UP....no matter how few calories I ate, or how much I excersised. Now the fluctuations do not bother me.


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## elle1959 (Sep 7, 2015)

greentree said:


> Since I gave up most grains and sugar....I lost 32 lbs and have not had to worry about how much I eat; my body knows when to quit. I only eat when I am hungry. before, the scale only went UP....no matter how few calories I ate, or how much I excersised. Now the fluctuations do not bother me.


I'm with you. Lost 40 lbs by cutting carbs and I keep it off by keeping my carb consumption down. No exercise involved, I just cut out white food, sugars and most other high-carb things. I do allow a bit of fluctuation (5 lbs or so) but when I start creeping up there I just go back to the same things I did to lose and it comes off again. 

I think we've been sold a bill of good about weight loss for a long time. Dietary fat is not the enemy and exercise is great for fitness but it's not a weight loss program. 

This study doesn't seem to take into account the fact that these contestants put themselves through a very intensive and rigorous FAST weight loss program that would be impossible to maintain over the long term. I read a follow-up to this study by another scientist who suggested that the metabolic changes experienced by these people wouldn't have been so severe if they had been less stressed in the way they took the weight off. The old saw about losing slowly seems to be worth looking at, and the quality of what we eat and type of foods we eat seems to be more important than just counting calories in and calories burned.


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## Lisabaltic (Dec 26, 2015)

I work as a hypnotherapist and quite often there is an emotional route cause to the weight gain.


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## gottatrot (Jan 9, 2011)

Agree with Lisabaltic. Without addressing the "why" of weight gain, people will never be successful at keeping weight off. An example of the emotional component of food: what does it matter how many calories a person can eat to maintain or lose? That matters only if a person is emotionally attached to what and how much they eat. 

Something I decided before losing 40 lbs: it didn't matter how slow my metabolism was. If I could only eat one cracker a day to stay thin, that is what I would do. Of course no one has a metabolism that slow. I had to discover how many calories would keep my own body at the weight I wanted it to be, regardless of metabolism. 

How do we know what these peoples' metabolisms were before they lost the weight? For example, the man who now requires 800 less calories per day than expected: perhaps that was his baseline metabolism before he began dieting. 

Another comment: Of course people's metabolisms slow as they lose weight. The best explanation I ever heard is that our body is like a factory. It requires much more energy (calories) to run a bigger factory than a smaller factory. The more weight we lose, the slower our metabolism will be. That's because it requires a lot less energy to maintain a 150 lb sized factory than to maintain a 300 lb sized factory. 
If you want to weigh 20 lbs less than you do now, then you have to expect eat less food each day than you do now. If you restrict your diet for weight loss and then go back to eating what a bigger factory needs, you will become a bigger factory again. This is where the emotional attachment to food comes into play. You have to be OK with eating less than you do now permanently or you will never maintain weight loss.

We feed our 1200 lb horses much more hay than our ponies. That is the way life is. Bigger creatures eat more calories.
I lost my weight 18 years ago. I eat a lot less than I did back then. It doesn't matter much what I eat or how much I exercise, as long as I keep the energy/calories down to what I need to keep my smaller factory running.


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## greentree (Feb 27, 2013)

Part of the "emotional" component of eating comes from the effect of the wheat on the brain. 

I was most definitely an emotional eater, and coming close to suicidal before I gave up the grains. I gave them up in the dead of winter, after Thanksgiving, but in the height of cookie advertising season! No problem. Once that poison was out of my life, and suddenly I FELT well again, instead of sick, and sore, and depressed, and the weight was coming off with NO additional exercise, nothing could keep me DOWN. 

Gone were the sweet-salty-sweet-salty roller coaster cravings. Gone were the binge eating marathons at Olive Garden, or any other restaurant. If your meal starts with BREAD(wheat), moves to pasta(wheat), and ends with cake(wheat), what does that tell you? How much of that stuff can be consumed at one sitting?


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## greentree (Feb 27, 2013)

Pauline read the recent Wheat Belly Blog post, the Top 5 Reasons You Still Have Cravings and shared her perspective:

“Everything you say is true, Dr. Davis. I’ve been following your advice for the last 18 months and it’s taken this long to get my gut right.

“I always know when I’ve inadvertently eaten something containing wheat, generally when I’m eating out with friends. It’s an almost instantaneous increase in hunger, making me go looking for something carb/sugary to eat a few hours later. It also causes gut and joint pain that comes within 24 hours.

“Other than that, I can go all day without food and no sugar crashes. I eat because food tastes so good now. I made a yummy chicken and vegetable curry with cauliflower ‘rice’ last night, so good and I had a second small serving. I’m still not hungry 14 hours later and will now wait until I get hungry before I eat again.

“Before Wheat Belly, I used to eat compulsively every few hours—bread, cracker biscuits, cakes. etc. I was hungry all the time. Now that the wheat and other grains are gone, I get hungry normally—when my stomach is empty, and not the gliadin-driven mess I was before.”

Wheat and closely related grains trigger hunger, often to extreme degrees, because:

Gliadin-derived peptides act as opiates on the human brain–It’s been known for over a century that opiate drugs like morphine increase appetite, an effect shared by gliadin-derived peptides that, like opiate drugs, bind to the opiate receptors of the brain. Susceptibility to this effect varies from individual to individual, but can be responsible for massive increases in appetite in some people. People with a tendency towards bulimia and binge-eating disorder are especially susceptible, experiencing 24-hour-a-day food obsessions.
Gliadin-derived peptides block leptin–Leptin is the hormone of satiety that tells you that you’ve had enough to eat. Gliadin-derived peptides, in addition to their opiate effects, also block leptin, thereby disabling the fullness signal. Wheat germ agglutinin, the lectin protein of wheat, rye, barley, and rice, is also suspected to exert a similar effect.
Amylopectin A raises blood sugar to high levels–Because of its highly digestible nature (unlike the indigestible or only partially digestible proteins from grains), amylopectin A starch of wheat and grains is a potent trigger for high blood sugar and insulin. High blood sugar and insulin are followed by low blood sugars, accompanied by mental “fog,” fatigue, anxiety, and a desperate feeling of hunger occurring in 90-120 minute cycles.
Put it all together: wheat and related grains are potent appetite stimulants and obesogens–foods that make you fat. To make matters worse, we are advised by “official” sources of dietary information to include grains in every meal and food manufacturers put wheat into nearly all processed foods from licorice to chicken soup. Wheat and grains for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner, for snacks–is it any wonder Americans consume more food per capita than any other nation on this planet and are now the fattest population in the history of the world?

The bright side of all this is that, if you recognize these essential facts, you are set free from the incessant hunger and quest for food of the wheat/grain-eater, enjoying extended periods with no thought of food whatsoever just like Pauline, hunger just a soft reminder that you should eat for sustenance.


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## elle1959 (Sep 7, 2015)

I posted this today on Facebook, as discussion of this study keeps popping up there. Worth a read. 

Why you shouldn't exercise to lose weight, explained with 60+ studies - Vox

It is true that we sometimes use food as an addictive "feel-good" substance but I think that we can gain control over that much more easily than is suggested by some. I lose my desire to binge on carby foods after about 2-3 days of low carb eating. That's it. If you know what's ahead, you can withstand a few days of cravings.


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## Golden Horse (Feb 20, 2010)

I'm actually a bit surprised by the reaction here, I thought it was an interesting study, and it's not all about WHY people gain weight in the first place, that is in itself a poorly understood thing, but why so many people fail to maintain big losses. Last stats I saw was 95% of big time losers gain most or even more weight back, and if their BMR has fallen so low as to me satisfied by 800 calories a day.

That means to maintain a loss the levels of diet and exercise that a person has to maintain is tough...not an excuse why it happens, but understanding that could help some people deal with it.


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## tinyliny (Oct 31, 2009)

I had heard this before, about the reduction in metabolism rate. it's very discouraging. what it says to me is, never get fat in the first place, because if you do, and you lose weight, you will have even worse metabolism. it's like you are scarred for life.


however, I think that some of the metabolism and craving issues they talk about ARE connected to our eating a carbohydrate rich, fat poor diet. I am not a fan of full on ketogenic diets, but I have experienced that when I DO eat plenty of fats, I get hungry, but don't have irrational cravings, at least much less so.

so, if thesee persons , who had lost a lot of weight, were trying to eat a so-called 'balanced' diet , which included occasional sweets, and other highly refined carb itemns, and trying to keep their calories down by eating low fat items, they maybe were setting themselves up for suffering cravings.


I think some of us, just as in the case of alchoholics, simply CANNOT eat certain foods without having trouble. the old, "just eat sweets in moderation" does not work for us. it's like telling the alchoholic, 'just have an occasional drink, on special occasions".

the only way to freedom is abstention. I've experienced it myself . . . . but, just like GH, I was not able to keep 'sober'. Guess I hadn't hit bottom yet. still haven't.


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## Triumvirate (Jan 24, 2015)

Honestly I feel bad for the people who gain all that weight back and more after a big weight loss because all it means is they were fed pure misinformation about weight loss. 

The first thing people change when they "want to lose weight" is their diet. However, what they do is severely restrict their calories because that's what they believe the _should_ do. Then they put themselves through a rigorous exercise regimen which they HATE because it feels more like a punishment than something fun or relaxing. If they haven't given up then they manage to achieve moderate weight loss solely due to the fact that they are under-eating and burning off (mostly through cardio) all their fat and what little muscle they have. Then they end up with low fat, low musculature, and a body that believes it's going through a famine. Once the challenge is over they start eating again with the promise of doing it slowly but their body demands more food from having starved so they binge back. However the body fears another "famine" so it slows the metabolism down and stores as much fat as it can in case hard times hit again. Quick but unsustainable.

I've found that sustainable weight loss comes from EATING and eating enough and putting on lean body mass. The more lean muscle you have, the higher your metabolism is and the more you have to EAT to be hungry. Someone who eats more and works out as much as someone who eats way less than they should will be leaner ultimately. They are eating enough to build and maintain muscle and bodily function. It takes a long time. It isn't quick but slow doesn't sell unfortunately.

Sadly, after all the return of weight gain, most people feel as if sustainable weight loss is impossible and so they resign themselves to the belief that they will forever be overweight and give up trying. It makes me furious people will sell faulty, unsustainable "quick weight loss" to people who desperately want to be different all in the name of money and what people are willing to desperately grasp onto for hope.


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## beau159 (Oct 4, 2010)

I think most people that are overweight have SLOWLY put on the pounds of the course of YEARS. 

While it's really motivating to see the pounds drops off the scale, when you lose weight rapidly, that is when it can be the hardest to sustain. (which is exactly what they do in the Biggest Loser) Your body's basic instincts are to survive. So if it is not getting enough calories to survive, it's going to slow down the metabolism. Of course, you have to consume less calories in order to lose weight in the first place, so it literally puts a person between a rock and a hard place. 

If people lost the weight as slowly as they put it on, it might make the weight loss more sustainable. But who wants to wait 5-10 years to lose the weight that they put on in 5-10 years? ;-) 

I also really like the analogy that Tiny used regarding alcoholics. That very much can ring true with your diet!!

And very true with what triumvirate said about MUSCLE. While I know that not everyone would agree with a body builder lifestyle, there are certainly lessons that can come from that. Their diets revolve around feeding and building muscle. The more muscle you have, the more calories you need to burn. While they usually do deal with very low calorie intake every day, most of that is because they eat very little to zero carbs and focus the majority of their diet on protein and frequent small meals every 2 to 3 hours.


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## gottatrot (Jan 9, 2011)

On the other hand, you can see a slow metabolism as a positive thing. If you decide to train for a marathon or do a lot of hard physical labor, it can get quite difficult to get enough calories in to keep up. My uncle recently did the Pacific Crest trail and said that women do much better than men when hiking out on the trails for months. They lose less weight and their bodies tolerate the hard labor better since it's impossible to eat enough trail food to compensate. He had to put on 40 lbs beforehand and still came in at the end quite emaciated. 

I'm convinced the mental component is the biggest hold up for people. Metabolism never keeps weight on people when food is not readily available. I also see many people who give up different types of food and eat massive salads or bowls of popcorn. Their diets fail every time because they always feel they need to eat large amounts of food, healthy or not. 

So many people I am around have a distorted view of how much food they need to eat. Why does a 5'3" woman think she should eat two sandwiches instead of one? Why does she call a bowl of soup a "snack?" Why is another snack two candy bars? It was interesting when I traveled to Japan and saw how their portion sizes correlate to ours.


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## bsms (Dec 31, 2010)

For me, it is simple: I find it easy to go back to the lifestyle that got me fat to begin with.

Yes, I was a very fat baby and kid, which doesn't help. But I can't change that. My metabolism will change in whatever way it will, and I can't change that. But I can lose weight, down to the upper 150s at least, if I minimize carbs and eat small enough portions to be hungry sometimes. As in...daily.

If I eat more carbs, then I get more cravings and I get vicious headaches if I don't eat. So avoiding carbs sounds like the right solution...but it is hard to do in modern society. If I'm not careful, they creep back in, and so does the weight. After all, there is nothing wrong with my body becoming more efficient (needing fewer calories) that cannot be handled by EATING fewer calories. But when the carbs creep back in, so do the cravings. And then I eat more, and then I gain weight again.

I do think weight lifting helps. I don't care if it doesn't turn me into a fat burning machine. It helps me feel better, and when I feel better, I eat less. I am, I suppose, a psychological eater. I eat from want, not from need. 

Oddly enough, among my horses...Cowboy would eat until he exploded. He gains weight easy because he's fed with the larger horses and he'll eat as long as there is food. Trooper is in between. Mia was like Bandit is - they eat when they feel hungry, but will walk away when getting full. I'm a "clean the plate" eater, like Cowboy, and in danger of looking like him.

Portions. IIRC, a person buying a bottle of Coca-cola in the 1950s got a 5 oz bottle of Coke. And the original McDonald's hamburger was 1/10th of a pound, uncooked, 80% lean.


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## tinyliny (Oct 31, 2009)

portions sizes in restaurants reallly ARE outrageous!

sadly, other countries where food is abundant are copying us. Japan included.


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## gottatrot (Jan 9, 2011)

This was typical of what they gave us in Japan at a restaurant. Two bites of fish, a scoop of rice, several pickled veggies, soup. At McDonald's they give you a 4 piece nugget or a small cheeseburger, small fries and a tiny pop. It's like a kid's meal over here.

It made me laugh when we went to a steak house and the steak was about three bites along with three green beans and four pieces of corn. Then you see everyone walking for miles and it's no wonder nearly everyone is thin.


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## greentree (Feb 27, 2013)

Gotta...that is about the amount of food that we eat, sans the rice. I would like your post, if I could...

I heard the researcher from this project on "science Friday" yesterday. I suspect this metabolism effect has to do with fatiguing the adrenal system by working so hard under so much stress.


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## Overread (Mar 7, 2015)

I think one key element is that weight loss has to go hand in hand with lifestyle change. 

Fast dieting can shed weight and a sudden heavy workout regime can aid that. But if that is a short term element; if that is what you do to lose weight then what will happen is predictable. You finish teh weight loss and go back to the old way of living (quickly or slowly) and that starts to add the weight on again.


I think the best way is to realise that you have to change yourself mentally and in lifestyle and outlook if you want to change your body physically. Without that dedication to change in life you will just be in a cycle of ups and downs in weight that won't be healthy physically nor mentally. 

People I see who lose weight and kept it lost are those who have often changed how they live not just what they eat. They change as a person in their outlook and focuses in life and that aids them in adjusting their life that results in weightloss. If anything the weightloss should be a side-effect of the lifestyle change rather than the focus (because when it hte focus you quickly lose it once you lose weight).


I think this is why changing to adding more physical elements in life; like doing voluntary work outside (for those whose main work is office/desk based); getting and caring for a horse; doing sports; taking up hiking etc.... These things are productive for the person. They put in the sweat and get a reward out of the activity that is near instant or at least present by the end of the day. Rather than a reward that might be weeks away through weight loss. 


Our bodies grow to adapt to our environment. If you make your environment desirable and also productive and conductive to a more healthy level of weight then you can get there; and more importantly once you're there you can stay there without having to put in the "effort" to keep the weight off. The weightloss or rather weight adjustment is automatic.





Of course there will be those who have to make more adjustments than others, even doing the same work and similar lifestyles some people will be larger than others; thus there has to be an element of adaptability. Further those who are in danger of health risks due to extreme weight gain will likely have to adopt a period of strict dieting and weight loss simply to achieve a weight that allows them to change their lifestyle more completely .


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## greentree (Feb 27, 2013)

Excellent post, overread!!

We can shift the entire paradigm by talking to ourselves in a different pattern. 
By eating to live, instead of living to eat. 
By telling ourselves that we 'don't ' eat something(sugar, grains,etc.), rather than we 'can't' eat it. 
By going into a fast food place and telling oneself it does not smell good.

These are just a few little tricks that have helped me .,,,


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## Mulefeather (Feb 22, 2014)

There is also a big problem in looking at contest winners from "The Biggest Loser" and other such TV shows. These people are taken out of the environment and lifestyle that made them fat in the first place, and dropped into a totally new environment where they've got nothing to do but work out and eat healthfully for however long it takes. They've got people preparing their meals, yelling them through every workout, and the motivation of being on camera in front of millions and potentially winning a lot of money. No regular job, no childcare, no worrying about maintaining a household, caring for pets, paying bills. 

Once that all goes away, back comes the weight. The person did not learn how to adapt or change their lifestyle or their relationship with food, they basically were in boot camp where they had no other choice but to lose. 

The habits that come with weight loss are hard to break out of. I've gained back weight I had fought hard to lose, and now I'm paying the price of having to start nearly back at square one. I am a stress eater, I travel a lot, and I work a lot. I also have issues with binge eating that I am just beginning to explore with a therapist, hopefully more in depth as my life calms down some from the major changes of this year.


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## Kyleen Drake (May 26, 2016)

I am one of those people that the only time in my life I have gained weight is when I was pregnant. Afterwards, I found it hard to shake it off. Sometimes I would do okay getting it back down, sometimes it was more of a struggle. Second pregnancy it just kind of made it worse, then add in some major skin issues that make me look a whole heck of a lot more chubby than I am. I am chubby, no mistake, I won't lie. My weight before my son was 175, I wore a size 12 women's jeans. After I was a size 16 and 180 pounds. I'm kind of stuck around that weight right now. I did have a very major injury to my right leg, the doctors say it's remarkable I can walk again. I've been walking again for a year now, without issue. And now I'm with a lot of you, trying to get back to a healthy weight. I'm very high risk for diabetes, heart disease, colon cancer, breast cancer and liver cancer. So being in good shape matters to me. 

I'm also a picky eater. The only vegetables I like are carrots, green beans, sweet peas, corn, okra, and potatoes. >.> I wish I liked more, but I don't. Good thing is I like a ton of fruit, very rarely I met a fruit I didn't like. This is why I started the morning smoothie for myself. I'm down from 210 pounds, to 180 again. I hide my veggies I don't like inside my fruit smoothies and add in a little protein powder. It keeps me full until well past noon. And I do well, I am sure to drink my 8 cups of water a day. It helps. I'm still working on portion control, that can be a pain when we eat out.

I don't deprive myself, I allow myself some of the things I enjoy, once in awhile.. For me, moderation is the key. I get to feeling deprived and then the emotional problems come into play. I don't want that.

As for my workout, yoga is my saving grace. I hated working out at the gym with weights. I don't like cardio on a treadmill. But getting a workout with yoga, pluss cardio, and plus getting some old cranky stiff muscles to loosen up so they don't hurt as much, heck yeah!! 

Good luck to all of you! Be happy, be healthy! You're beautiful inside and out! No matter what size you are!


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## EponaLynn (Jul 16, 2013)

elle1959 said:


> I'm with you. Lost 40 lbs by cutting carbs and I keep it off by keeping my carb consumption down. No exercise involved, I just cut out white food, sugars and most other high-carb things. I do allow a bit of fluctuation (5 lbs or so) but when I start creeping up there I just go back to the same things I did to lose and it comes off again.
> 
> I think we've been sold a bill of good about weight loss for a long time. Dietary fat is not the enemy and exercise is great for fitness but it's not a weight loss program.


Me too, it's a work in progress. I eat under 20 carbs per day (no fruit, no grains, no starchy veggies) and even so I'm a bit stalled. I've lost 27 or so lbs. but need to lose more for sure.

OP check out Active Low Carbers forum


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