I have plenty of patients who talk to me and report that they can lose the weight, but have such a hard time maintaining their weight that it will be only a short time before they gain all their weight back, if not more. I call it “Whale Watching”. There are days where the whale is underwater and swimming under the “calorie” breakpoint, but then the weekend arrives or social event comes in and you see the whale jump above the calorie breakpoint and your diet for the week is over. The scale essentially just goes up and down only to find its way to the same weight you have been seeing for years. Why? There are reasons too many to count that play a role in causing someone to gain the weight back, and I have listed my top 3 reasons:
1) Congratulations! You lost weight.
Oh but wait, a majority of it was water and muscle which slowed down your metabolism, and of course it caused you to gain the weight back fairly quickly. I cringe at all the weight loss products and programs out there that often don’t provide the right nutrition that causes one to lose inappropriate weight. So take it from me, if the claim sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
2) The support wasn’t there.
I have repeatedly emphasized that this is one of the most critical mistakes that people make when trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle. If you don’t surround yourself with supportive people, and do the opposite by spending time with food sabotagers, it will be that much harder to stand your own ground if you are outnumbered. Even if it is one person, you need that one to keep you in check.
3) You didn’t address the root cause of your weight problem.
Weight loss is not just about diet and exercise. The key missing component to most weight loss programs is not addressing the behaviors related to weight management. Behavioral education is what we pound on at Med-Fit, and so if you are not handling your stress-eating, no matter whether you diet and exercise for a while, stress-eating will continue to come back and haunt you until you get help in developing strategies to manage it.
Share with us what seems to throw you off track when it comes to maintaining your weight! If you are having problems with it, just click the link here and let’s have a chat.
Dr. Angela Tran D.O.
