Rebound weight-gain, that is weight regained after a diet, is widely called, 'going back to your old habits', but really why would you?
You've been blown away by the sometimes astounding power of your appetite, pushed around by a body determined to thwart your efforts by almost any means available to it. tormented at every turn by exhaustion and boredom, and you've slowly grindingly managed to lose some weight; often over a period of weeks or months, sometimes years, why the hell would you go back to what apparently prompted all your efforts in the first place?
What you associate with all this suffering is what you would go back to, are you crazy? For what reason?
Your experience of your appetite and hunger may well have totally changed, for some for a while anyway, it may have calmed down considerably as I mentioned in stage two; it is what a lot of fat haters assume always happens all time when you restrict calories, they especially believe this with training the appetites of children. In truth it can occur, although it's as unpredictable and almost always temporary. What is predictable is that regardless of sometimes totally different experiences , failure is virtually inevitable. All tend to end up more or less back where they started, eventually; that is short to medium term, very rarely does it take that long.
By dieting, you are declaring a war you will almost inevitably lose, on the very rare occasions that you somehow don't, are such an anomaly. The figure so often quoted is 95% failure, that means, every time you diet, you have a 95% chance of failure, that means out of millions a tiny number will succeed, and most others could spend a lifetime of never succeeding, that is as much a fact as the fact that there are and continue to be fat people.
It takes me 10 times to quit cigarettes, eventually it sticks. Should I not even bother, since I know it won't take? I know of many people who do change their lifestyle, and keep the weight off. I think too much of the problem with those who don't, is "all or nothing" mentality. Weight loss is slow, with a huge learning curve. It took me three months of slowly changing my eating and exercising habits before I lost any weight, but this is my new lifestyle. And I'm happy with it.
ReplyDeleteAnd those people who've lost it and kept it off, at least the ones I know, none did it with extreme calorie restriction. Certainly not me!
Hello Julie,
ReplyDeleteYou've given me an idea for a post, I think what you've said deserves a more fuller explanation than I'm going to give here, but just in case I'm not on your normal reading and in case you need a reply, desperately:
Cigarette smoking is merely a habit of absolutely no significance to the body's needs whatsoever.
That means little stands in the way of stoppping, even though the little that does, makes it really hard.
I'm glad you've found that changing what you eat was both enjoyable and doable, I agree; when I finally stopped all atttempts to diet; and lose weight, to 'eat healthily' and to force myself to do stuff-along with stopping the self-hate etc, I too enjoy what I eat and feel better in every way that I can think of, it's great isn't it?