One of my favorite bloggers Gretchen at Gretchen In-Between wrote about regaining lost weight yesterday.
She shared how she lost 60 pounds in the first couple years of blogging and then slowly regained 50 of it with 10 pounds here and 5 pounds there. I found her explanation of how she regained the weight slowly very interesting:
Yeah, I know, that’s a lot. Just like 60 pounds is a lot of weight to lose, 50 pounds is a lot of weight to gain back. But here’s the thing, it really didn’t SEEM like a lot at the time. Each pound that crept on really seemed to do exactly that: creep. Unlike in my previous life as a binge eater and general destroyer of my body, I didn’t think that I was doing that much particularly unhealthy stuff. I wasn’t sneaking Baconators into my dorm room, I wasn’t tiptoeing around the kitchen at midnight, I wasn’t pretending like I didn’t already eat dinner only to go have a second dinner with friends.
Sure, I also wasn’t running anymore, and I had stopped counting my calories, but it’s not like I was diving headfirst into a pile of chili cheese fries every night either. I ate lots of normal, healthy, whole foods (and occasionally some unhealthy foods too, of course), with the key word being “lots.” I was simply eating more than I should have been eating, and not moving as much as I should have been moving.
And so the weight, it came. It came slowly and quietly and in the dead of night, and it’s almost like I didn’t even notice it was there. I say almost, of course, because in reality I did notice.
Her post is a really honest look at how you regain weight after weight loss slowly. I completely related to her thoughts on not caring and not wanting to try because though weight loss is easy in theory it’s difficult in the application. Once you’ve lost some weight or spent some time trying, it’s so much more satisfying to just stop caring about the whole lot of it.
After losing weight it can be a struggle to even maintain the loss you’ve achieved. I lost weight in college and then spent the first year or so of blogging steadily regaining that weight after school when I was unemployed, depressed, and living at home with family. It snuck back on a few pounds at a time and the work I’d put in disappeared quickly.
I’ve noticed that it’s still hard even maintaining my own 55 pound loss over the last couple of years, where I know better and do better with exercise and food choices. Over the holidays I regained 5 pounds and while it is hardly noticeable, I am now at a place where I’d rather not be. It’s something I’m nipping in the bud early with my healthy life challenge goals, but it’s something to consider because as Gretchen shared and I’ve experienced – weight gain sneaks up slowly.
Some of us have to pay attention more to our food intake and exercise habits than others do. We can’t just play around with portions and treats and extra calories. We will probably have to watch what we eat carefully for the rest of our lives in order to lose weight and keep it off. I appreciate her honesty in this fact even though it does feel a bit heavy when I think about it.
Gretchen made herself some goals and shared more about her plans. She’s a great blogger so make sure you go check out her blog and follow along with her plans to re-lose the weight and establish a habit of being active every day.