7 Reasons We Gain Our Weight Back Taste for Truth - Weight Loss Encouragement

I would love to know how many pounds I've gained and lost in my life. In the old days it was all about "Go on a diet, lose weight, live it up, then gain the weight back." Over and over and over again. Every once in awhile I could muster up the self control to lose the weight, but I always gained it back. I had little self control, I loved food, and I was an emotional eater. And because of that I gained the weight back every single time.
I actually knew how to lose the weight, but I didn't know how to keep it off. So today I'd like to look at why we gain our weight back and how to stop the old merry-go-round. Let's begin by looking at why we gain it back.
7 Reasons We Gain Our Weight Back We let go of boundaries once we lose our weight. Think of it. Have you ever lost weight without setting some sort of boundaries? Maybe you did intuitive eating and ate only when you were hungry and stopped when you were full. Or you joined Weight Watchers or you did intermittent fasting. But in some way you set limits for yourself. Unfortunately, once we lose the weight, all limits go out the window and that's the biggest thing that makes us gain the weight back. There are two ways we do this: 1) We do it consciously. We think, "Yay!! I get to live it up again!!" Then immediately go to living it up and gain our weight back. 2) We do it without realizing we're doing it. So for example, I may have lost my weight by counting carbs faithfully with a set limit each day of how much I could have. When I lose the weight, I still try to watch how many carbs I eat, but I don't have a set limit. Or I lose weight with Weight Watchers. I still focus on free foods and eat as many as I want--but I no longer count points. So what we have are some practices, but we don't have actual boundaries. We switch to different boundaries and don't go through the necessary work to learn how to follow our boundaries. In the first reason, we let go of boundaries altogether, but with this reason, we actually do have boundaries--we just haven't learned how to follow them. Here's an example. Let's say you lost your weight with a diet, but then you decide to switch to 3 meals and one snack a day for your boundaries. Since those boundaries are looser than what you're used to, there is a learning curve to figuring out how to maintain your weight within those boundaries. If we don't make the effort to learn how to make those boundaries work, we'll gain our weight back. We have a new trial in our lives that makes us feel like eating. Often we'll be going along smoothly and then something happens that makes us want to eat. Some trial that triggers all our emotional eating tendencies. Maybe there's a pandemic. Or the world is looking a little scary. Or someone you love is having a crisis. Or you're having a crisis. When those new trials crop up, it makes us want to eat. And we may gain our weight back at that time. We stick to our boundaries most of the year but go off during holidays and vacations. This is a good one to think about now because we're smack dab in the middle of the holidays--halfway between Thanksgiving in the United States and Christmas. When we go on vacation or it's a holiday, it's easy to justify a few extra treats. We think, Oh I'll just eat this now and get back on track when I get back to normal life. When we do that, we usually only gain a few pounds a year, but after ten years, those few pounds a year have become 30-40 pounds and we're back in a situation where we need to do the whole thing over again. We reintroduce sugar and/or flour when that was part of the reason we lost the weight to begin with. I've talked to many people who lost their weight without renewing their minds. They were able to do it because they took away their biggest source of temptation: flour and sugar. Unfortunately, I've also talked to a lot of people who then reintroduced sugar and flour at some point and either gained all their weight back or at least a good share of it. We