3 Reasons You’re Regaining the Weight You Lost
Hey Angels and Alphas,
It’s no secret to anyone – the process of losing weight can feel like a roller coaster in pretty much every aspect of the word.
When you start off, you might be dropping pounds fast and you feel excited, motivated, and invigorated to keep doing what you’re doing. You’re working hard, shedding pounds like crazy, and you feel like you’re about to reach that dream body you’ve always desired.
And at other times, something as simple as a happy hour at work can make you feel like you’re back on that slow incline, wishing you could jump off the ride altogether and forget about all the progress you’ve made so far.
This is a well-known cycle in the weight loss community, and it’s often referred to as weight cycling. Regaining the weight you lost during your weight loss journey can have countless repercussions when it comes to your health, including a massive spike in body inflammation that has been linked to autoimmune diseases, among other dangerous illnesses.
But did you know research has shown that more than 80 percent of people with obesity who lose weight… end up gaining it back?
That’s a BIG number, and it’s one you must always keep in mind when you’re on a weight loss journey. Because the fact is, your journey doesn’t stop when you hit that desired number on the scale.
Today, we’re here to explore three of the biggest reasons why you might be putting pounds back on after you’ve lost them… and how to prevent this from happening in the future:
#1 IF YOU FEEL LIKE YOU’RE LOSING A LOT OF ENERGY…
As you’re on a weight-loss journey and you’re shedding pounds, your body will usually start to compensate by trying to hold all of its available energy (meaning calories.) This is one of the reasons why it’s so hard to bust through weight loss plateaus. On average, for every two pounds you lose, research has shown us that your body will try to get you to eat roughly 100 calories more than you otherwise would.
The fix here is a rather simple one: When you feel hungry, immediately reach for some water. Research has shown us that, among adults, poor hydration has been directly linked to a higher body mass index… which means sipping on some water before eating could be one of the best things you can do to prevent racking up pounds after you’ve lost them.
#2 IF YOU’RE NOT FOCUSING ON THE REAL PROBLEM…
Experts have agreed that most weight-loss efforts fail to address the underlying psychological factors that motivate our health and nutrition choices. Unless those psychological factors are confronted, and dealt with, your relationship with food and health will not really change, causing you to immediately go back into your old patterns of behaviors the second you get comfortable with your progress.
Here’s how to fix it: journal! If you try journaling regularly and writing about how you feel, especially when it comes to exercise and nutrition, you will, without a doubt, achieve more consistent and sustainable progress.
By keeping a diet log, and logging all the food you eat and how you feel when you eat them, you will start to recognize patterns – is it stress that causes you to reach for sugary snacks? Or maybe it’s the trigger that you’re always mindlessly munching on processed foods while you’re watching Netflix?
Recognizing those patterns will help you become aware of them and they will no longer control you as much as they used to.
#3 IF YOUR APPROACH TO WEIGHT LOSS WAS AN OVERHAUL
Even after all the misconceptions about diets have been debunked, people still fall into the fad diet trap. They shed pounds in the short-term, achieve a goal, and then instantly go back to their old behaviors when they get off their restrictive, hard-to-maintain diets. Once they revert back to their old patterns, they regain the weight – simple as that.
The fix? Make your approach sustainable. Shift your eating and exercise habits by creating small, incremental, controlled changes. Stack these small changes on top of each other. Within a few months, you’ll look back and realize how much your lifestyle has changed… and you won’t feel any pressure or stress to go back to your old ways. When you compound these small changes, you’re changing yourself in the long term and creating lasting results for your health and your body.
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