Do you keep regaining weight after doing a diet? Have you done several diets and gained weight back over time?
You do a diet, you lose weight, you keep it off for awhile then at some point after doing that program your weight came back? If this sounds familiar, this is for you!
A lot of women over 35 who come to me in my nutrition practice are very frustrated about their weight. They have done several diets, in fact many of them are experts in all the diets, yet still feel as if they're spinning their wheels with losing weight.
Some of the women over 35 I have worked with in my weight loss program believe dieting should be sustainable. However, dieting is not sustainable.
Dieting is a short-term intervention and if your relationship with food sucks, your mindset sucks and you don't already have the basics down then trying to diet, count calories more or doing Weight Watchers for the 30th time will just create more frustration for you, more food obsession and more spinning your wheels.
In this Dish On Ditching Diets podcast episode, I breakdown four reasons why individuals regain weight after dieting.
I also discuss the importance of self reflecting on why you think you regained weight after previous diets attempts before doing another diet, program or counting calories or macros.
Remember the goal is not to lose weight. It's to maintain whatever weight you have lost! Listen to the episode for more details or read the transcript below.
In this Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast Episode, You Will Hear:
- 4 Reasons Why You Regain Weight After Dieting
- How Your Perfectionist Mindset May Be Causing Weight Regain
- Why You Must Self-Reflect Is BEFORE Doing Another Diet
- Why Diets May Be Setting You Up To Fail From The Beginning
- The Importance Of Upgrading Your Internal Operating System
- What's Not Normal For Us To Think About In Weight Loss
- Why You Need An Exit Out Of A Diet
Never Miss An Episode! Subscribe to the Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast on Apple, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotifyor Amazon Music
Related Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast Episodes
- Are You Dieting Too Much
- What To Eat In Menopause & Perimenopause
- Ditching Restrictive Dieting: Terry's Weight Loss Journey
- Eating Too Little Is Making You Fat
- Why Weight Loss Is A Mental Journey - Karen's Weight Loss Transformation
Why You Keep Regaining Weight Podcast Transcript
Hello Friends! Today we’re talking about why you keep regaining the weight. Before we dive in, I just want to remind you that I am doing a cookbook giveaway from April 2024 through December 2024.
I’m gifting a winner one of my cookbooks each month. April winner was announced in the last podcast and now we are looking for a May winner. You can enter to win my cookbook by leaving a 5-star rating and review of the podcast in Apple podcast.
Go to your Apple podcast, click on the Dish On Ditching Diets thumbnail. Scroll to the bottom where you see ratings and reviews and leave your review and 5-star rating there for a chance to win.
I appreciate all of you and your kind reviews so much. It’s really been fun reading your reviews and I do love gifting you my cookbook.
My low-calorie cookbook was released in 2020 and fun story… I was supposed to be on QVC promoting my cookbook.
My publisher had me setup to do a dry run with QVC in April of 2020 and then to do the live film in May of 2020 and it never happened because well, we all know what happened in 2020.
It was such a buildup and then such a let down because QVC never brought that segment back onto their show after the pandemic. It was really a bummer especially since I put so much time and effort into writing my cookbook.
Anyway, I’m happy to gift it you guys for listening to the show and I hope you find some recipes to enjoy from it!
So, let’s chat about why you keep regaining the weight. There’s 4 reasons I’m going to share with you.
I speak to a lot of women every week who are my clients, women in my consultations and on social media and the common thing I hear from these women is I did all these diets and I lost weight, but then I regained the weight.
There’s actually a form you fill out before having a consultation with me and that form has a question that says tell me what diets you’ve done and what were the results.
The question right after that says why do you think you regained the weight? You know what the most frequent answer is that I see? I don’t know. I always find that so curious.
These women are telling me how they lost weight doing things like low carb, Atkins, Optavia, Nutrisystem, Jenny Craig, WW 3 billion times, fasting, Whole30, keto, an 800-calorie diet, a shake program or a meal replacement program.
Clearly, these women are pros at dieting and testing out diets.
And clearly none of these women have a weight loss problem. They all can lose weight. In fact, they’ve lost weight a ton of times over and over again. They don’t have a weight loss problem.
The real problem is they keep regaining it and it’s really curious to me how so many of women don’t realize that this is the problem they need to solve for.
I will even ask these women in their consultations with me why they think they regained the weight, and they will still say I don’t know, or I think it’s sugar. If I could just learn to never eat sugar again.
Or it’s my 3pm snacking. If I could just figure out how to cut out my 3pm snacking. Or I don’t exercise. If I could just figure out how to exercise and be motivated to exercise. These are the type of things they will say to me.
The truth is none of these things are why they keep regaining weight.
So, if this is you, stop and self-reflect on why you keep regaining weight. Before you do another diet or program, self-reflect on why you keep regaining the weight.
And there are 4 things I’m going to discuss today to help you figure this out.
Number one is doing a diet that’s setting you up to fail from the beginning. The goal is not to lose weight. The real goal is to keep weight loss off long-term. To have sustainable habits.
To have a good relationship with food and exercise. To have healthy habits. To be a stronger and fitter version of yourself.
What I see quite a few women doing are diets that are unsustainable and too extreme. They’re eating in a way and exercising in a way that they cannot follow until they’re 85 years old.
A lot of women approach weight loss with this mindset that they need to cut out all their favorite foods and do drastic things to manipulate the number on the scale.
A lot of women approaching weight loss with the mindset that they need to eat perfectly healthy foods 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year and if they screw up one day, then they have ruined all their progress.
A think a lot of women think this. That you have to eat perfectly healthy in order to lose weight.
You can eat unhealthy and still lose body fat. As a nutritionist, I hate to say that, but it is factual true. There’s been studies on this.
The Twinkie study is one example. A guy ate Twinkies in a calorie deficit and lost weight. His health markers improved too. Now I’m certainly not saying you should eat Twinkies.
Everyone needs to work on adding more high-quality foods to their diet, but I do believe we get into these mindsets where we think if we eat pizza, ice cream, cookies, etc. that we’ve somehow failed and will never reach our goals. And these mindsets are exactly why a lot of women regain weight.
They restrict these quote-on-quote bad foods for so long doing extreme diets or being on super low-calorie diets that once they come off those extreme diets, they overeat these quote-on-quote bad foods.
Right because you never healed your relationship with food. You never created a plan that was sustainable that taught you how to eat all foods you enjoy without gaining weight.
They are doing diets that are not sustainable that they can do until they’re 85 years old and they keep thinking there’s no possible way they can eat foods they enjoy, that are less nutritious and still lose weight.
I just think that if you have had this problem with your weight and dieting and food for 10, 20, 30, 40 or more years of your life that you should stop to think if maybe how you’re approaching weight loss is what’s causing your weight to regain.
Are you setting yourself up to fail from the start by doing something too extreme or unsustainable?
This was something that took me forever to realize in my own weight loss journey. I just kept thinking if I could have the willpower long enough to stick with a diet that I could lose weight. But I never thought beyond that.
My focus was always I gotta lose weight. I gotta lose weight. How do I lose weight? I never thought to myself like how if I do lose weight will I ever keep it off?
I just assumed that if I lost weight, I could go somehow go back to how I was eating and keep it off. I don’t know why I thought that, but that was my thinking until I just realized one day I had to change my habits.
I had to work on becoming someone who was healthier and change my habits had gradually. Not just be someone who was a dieter who never changed their habits.
I think a lot of the women I speak to, a lot of you, think the same way I did.
You’re so focused on losing the weight part and feeling better about yourself immediately, right now, right this second, that you miss the bigger goal and that’s why you fall for quick fixes, extreme protocols and unsustainable diets that yield short term weight loss.
Until you really accept that you have to change how you approach weight loss and that the goal is not to just lose weight – it’s to sustain it, you will continue to fall for these short-term fixes and be susceptible to regaining weight.
And listen, we’ve all grown up with diet culture and as a result, we all have come to think it’s normal to follow a crash diet to lose weight. That’s the old era of losing weight.
What’s not normal is for us to think about changing our habits. What’s not normal is for us to think, huh… how could I include my favorite foods and lose weight?
What’s not normal is for us to think, huh… am I losing weight too quickly? Is this diet or way of eating going to be sustainable until I’m 85 years old?
It's not normal for any of us to think that way so it makes sense why we get confused about why we keep regaining weight. But the thing I always say is you can’t build a house without a foundation.
That is how most approach weight loss because that’s what diet culture has taught everyone. You’re trying to throw up the walls and roof of the house, but you have no solid foundation.
You have no sustainable habits or a sustainable way of eating. Weight loss or the calorie deficit part is a lot easier when you have that foundational stuff in place.
I spoke to a woman recently in a consultation who told me she just wanted peace. She just wanted to stop thinking about weight loss so much.
She wanted to stop having to think so hard about food. Fearing food and worrying that every time she ate too many cookies how she would have to restrict because she feared she would gain weight.
I think this is what most of you want. Peace around food and your weight.
To free up your mental space. No keto, fasting, calories, low carb protocol, or bootcamp is going to do that for you.
So, ask yourself if you’ve regained weight after losing weight, did the diets or programs you’ve done in the past set you up to fail from the beginning?
Were they too extreme? Did they not include foods and meals that satisfied you? Were they unsustainable? Not something you could do until you’re 85 years old?
Number two you haven’t changed your identity and your beliefs to become someone who is healthy.
You’ve just been a dieter where you eat and exercise a certain way for 6 weeks or 6 months and then go back to eating how you were eating before. You have a different food plan and habits for when you’re dieting vs. when you’re not dieting.
The thing is permanent change requires real change. You have to upgrade your operating system.
You can’t have all these new healthy habits and still be the old version of you who thinks this will probably fail, this is impossible, I’m too busy, this will take forever, I can never eat anything I like. Stuff like that.
You have to actually become someone that is healthier. What are the habits, behaviors and identify of someone who is healthier? What do they do? How do they act? How do they show up, prioritize themselves etc.?
Instead of envying that one person in your life who is fit and always feeling like a failure around them, maybe, ask them how do you prioritize your health?
How do you make time for the gym with your kids? How do you meal prep and what easy meals do you go to?
It’s like your phone. You have all these apps on your phone, and you know how every once in a while, your phone tells you to upgrade the system?
Well, if you don’t run the upgrade the apps stop working overtime. This is no different with you in your journey. Upgrading your mindset with your beliefs and identity.
You can’t keep being this old version of yourself thinking what a big, fat failure you are while doing all these new habits.
Overtime you’ll stop doing the habits because you haven’t upgraded your operating system. Your identity is still wrapped up in the old version of you.
We often wrap up our identity in how we look and our physical appearance. There is a lot of family pressure and societal pressure to look a certain way.
That can be very hardwired and ingrained for decades. A lot of the clients I work with struggle initially with disconnecting their scale weight saying something about them as a person.
Someone might get on the scale, and it impacts their mood for their day. It says something you don’t want to say, so you feel down because you put a lot of meaning into that number.
This scale number says something about me as a person is what women often corelate it to. But the scale doesn’t. It just says something about your relationship to gravity in that moment.
I think sometimes recognizing yes; I have a body but it’s not who I am as a person can be helpful.
And then, recognizing this is the one body I get to live in so I’m going to take care of it forever. If I had a car and I could only have one car or one home for the rest of my life, I would probably take care of that a little differently knowing it was the only one I would ever get vs. knowing I can upgrade.
If I shatter my phone, I can get a new phone vs. if I shatter my body I can’t get a new body.
I don’t like before and after weight loss pictures because oftentimes when our brains see something, it fills in the blanks. The picture is the tip of the surface, but we don’t see what’s below the surface.
When I see a before and after weight loss picture especially when it’s one that’s of an extreme amount of weight loss, I think of the extreme protocols people do to make this happen, knowing what happens physiologically happens and what happens mentally because when you are trying to lose weight as fast as possible we have all the evidence in the world to suggest that is not sustainable.
We have evidence and I share this in my free weight loss class, that 95% of people who lose weight will gain it back and 1/3 to 2/3’s of those people will gain it back plus interest.
So, knowing that, it is to me a sad image of knowing the extremes people will go to when they are uncomfortable in their own skin.
It’s a very vulnerable position to be in and I think there’s a lot of companies and programs and diets that feed on that emotional vulnerability that promote quick fixes and short terms solutions without the long-term sustainability in mind.
The other part of it is the mental toll of having to do something that extreme has a psychological tax then gaining the weight back has a psychological tax. You start to create this story about yourself.
Because oftentimes when somebody is overweight it’s not the first diet they’ve tried or the first time they’ve lost weight, so it’s kind of reinforcing the internal belief they have about themselves that they can’t do this.
They can’t be successful and now they’ve going to this extreme length to lose a significant amount of weight fast, but they’ve done it in a way that’s extreme and unsustainable so as the weight creeps back on it reinforces this internal belief that I’m not good enough, I’m not worthy, I can’t do this.
Your brain will always try to pull you back into this identity to confirm this belief we have about ourselves.
We have an internal belief system that kind of runs the show and if we don’t upgrade that internal belief system and identity you will always default back to the old version of you.
So, a lot of times a person will start a path to improving their health but without changing their internal belief system their brain will always pull them back in the form of self-sabotage. And sometimes, it’s not necessarily self-sabotage but more like what that person was doing was completely unsustainable and they couldn’t keep doing it.
They couldn’t keep up with the extreme calorie deprivation, cutting out certain foods and extreme exercising.
As their internal operating system begins to see validation that they can’t do this, then they start to act in accordance with that belief system. They stop working out, they stop eating quality foods, stop paying attention to steps, protein, fiber.
You have to actually become someone that is healthier. Not just follow a diet. What are the habits, behaviors and identify of someone who is healthier? What do they do? How do they act?
How do they show up, prioritize themselves etc.? Instead of envying that one person in your life who is fit and always feeling like a failure around them, maybe, ask them how do you prioritize your health? How do you make time for the gym with your kids? How do you meal prep and what easy meals do you go to?
Real change comes not from just following a nutrition and exercise protocol, but actually changing your identity and beliefs to become that upgraded version of you. Becoming someone who’s healthier.
Becoming someone who’s fitter. Becoming someone who prioritizes putting high quality foods in their body and getting their steps, exercising. Prioritizing self-care and sleep.
If you’re not upgrading your operating system and changing your identity, then this may also be why you keep regaining weight.
You still have a story in your head about who you are, what your beliefs are, and you do these to validate this belief system and your identity.
A lot of the clients I work with are doing this and don’t realize this. My client Terry who was on the podcast in episode 113 talked about this.
Number three you don’t have an exit plan out of your diet, so you come out of a calorie deficit and you don’t know how to do maintenance.
You actually do need to bring calories up slightly coming out of a deficit and have a plan and structure for managing that until you learn what that looks like.
A lot of women come out of a diet and think the amount of food they were eating while dieing is what they should continue eating in maintenance.
Except that works until it doesn’t because our bodies are super smart and have this thing called adaptive thermogenesis. So, let’s say you go on a 1,500-calorie diet to lose weight.
You lose weight and you keep eating 1,500 calories. At some point your body is going to make those 1,500 calories your new maintenance. Now anytime you eat above 1,500 calories your body will be in a calorie surplus and overtime you will regain weight.
So, having an exit plan coming out of your diet and not sitting at that calorie deficit forever is important.
I know working with clients this is a foreign concept to all of them. Maintenance is the scariest for them, which is why I have them practice maintenance with me as part of my program.
Ask yourself, have any of the diets you’ve done previously taught you how to maintain or just to lose?
Has Weight Watchers taught you how to exit their plan? Has Noom taught you how to maintain what you’ve lost? Has Nutrisystem, Optavia or whatever protocol you’re doing?
I spoke with a woman recently who did Noom. She said it worked. She lost weight, but then she plateaued which a plateau means your body has adapted. Then slowly over about 18 months she gained the weight back.
Right, because she never brought calories back to maintenance. If your adaptive maintenance is lower now you are in a compromised position metabolically making it very easy to go over that number and gain weight back.
She also said she was really hungry. Noom is notorious for putting people’s calories too low so you’re hungry and now your body has adapted putting you in a vulnerable position.
Unfortunately, there’s a metabolic impact to dieting too much, too long and too extreme. With the Biggest Loser, I talk a bit about this in my free weight loss class.
There was a study done on the participants that showed their resting metabolic rate declined up to 30% which means that for the people who lost weight and gained some back, they burned up to 30% fewer calories than they had previously.
This means they gained a much slower metabolism making it HARDER to maintain their current body weight.
By the way, this is one of the best long-term studies we have to show the metabolic adaptations that take place with extreme dieting.
Less food coming in, more energy going out from exercise. Your body wants to downregulate to keep you alive. Our bodies number one priority is survival.
So, if you don’t have a lot of energy coming in, it makes sense why you wouldn’t have a roaring metabolism because you would die quicker.
We’re still dealing with this hardwiring from evolution. Our bodies have this survival-based instinct so if food was scarce which it was at one time it slows down metabolism to keep us alive.
That’s why certain systems shut down which expend a lot of energy like your immune system. Lot of people might find when they diet, they get sick more frequently.
That’s because with way less calories coming in, your body’s going to preserve energy by shutting off systems that take a lot of energy like the immune system or female reproductive cycle, sex hormones, etc.
A lot of women I see in my practice are in this scenario and they believe it’s perimenopause or something with their hormones.
Generally, based on my observations it’s not. The clients I have seen in practice it’s been their history with dieting that has impacted them metabolically and not in a positive way.
I have a phrase… more diets, more problems. The goal is to be in maintenance the majority of the time with a dieting phase here and there.
For example, the last time I was in a dieting phase was over a year ago and before that it was 2 years previous.
Most women tell me they want to build muscle and lose fat. Well, you can’t do those two things at the same time unless you are totally new at this.
It just does not work that way. You can get great body composition results being in maintenance.
A well fueled body with enough calories build muscle. A body under fueled in a calorie deficit can maintain muscle with adequate protein and strength training, but you won’t gain muscle in a deficit unless you are newbie.
But in any case…
If the diets you did in the past have not taught you how to exit them and go back to maintenance, then this may be why you’ve regained the weight.
You didn’t have an exit strategy. A lot of the clients I see are really good at dieting, but they’re really bad at maintaining their results. In fact, some clients I see them have this mindset where they think they should be losing weight in maintenance.
It’s just so incredibly fascinating that women are so accustomed to dieting that their brain is wired to look for weight loss. I tell my clients, look, we need to practice maintenance as if we are dieting but without expecting to see the scale go down.
Because maintenance is a victory! This is where the importance of measuring your habits and consistency and feeling proud about how you show up to take care of your body is so incredibly helpful.
To shift from thinking it’s all about the scale to thinking it’s about habits, feeling stronger, getting stronger, feeling proud for how you show up and take care of yourself. Taking care of yourself feels good!
Getting comfortable with maintenance and practicing it just like you do dieting is important and it could be a reason why you’ve regained weight.
Number four is not knowing how to deal with negative emotions. Diets don’t fix emotions and how we deal and cope with life, but many clients I have seen are trying to fix themselves, fix their weight and see the scale go down thinking it’s somehow going to fix how they feel about things.
But it doesn’t. Diets don’t fix emotions. Food doesn’t really help us cope with our emotions. Therapy does.
Coping with negative emotions requires a level of self-awareness that most of us are either too busy to recognize is a problem or sometimes we are aware it’s a problem and we don’t know what to do about it.
This is why some people regain weight though. They’ve learned to cope with loneliness, boredom, resentment, anger, stress or even a lack of self-purpose and hobbies by eating food.
Sometimes parents have even taught us this as we grow up. Oh, you’re having a bad day… here’s some food!
Or we have a headache or feel sick and we’ve learned to soothe that bad feeling with food. Some of us have been taught from a very young age to use food to feel better.
Except it doesn’t actually make us feel better. It does in the moment, but it’s short lived. Long term it does not make you feel better.
This ties in with your identity too. If you identify as an emotional eater. Saying I’m an emotional eater is a very fixed mindset.
So, then you validate this identify and belief about yourself with your actions and behaviors. You won’t prioritize walking, meal prepping, eating your protein, etc. if you think it’s not going to matter anyway because you always fail.
Shifting your identity to become an upgraded version of yourself needs to be part of this process and it’s something a lot of people miss in their journey. They are doing the things but are not really changing.
It’s like what I mentioned with the apps and your phone. You can do the habits, but you need to upgrade your operating system.
Upgrading your operating system means you would say I’m learning to become someone who doesn’t use food to cope with my emotions. I’m practicing experiencing my emotions.
A statement like those is a growth mindset. It says I can change. It says I may not be where I want to be yet, but I am working on it. I can learn to feel my emotions without food. I can become an upgraded version of myself.
Several of the clients I’ve worked with recognize they are eating for emotional reasons but are not sure what to do about it. They believe losing weight will fix how they deal with negative emotions. Crazy thing is dieting does not fix emotions.
But we always go back to dieting thinking that’s the solution. I have to speak to some of my clients about going to therapy.
My client Karen who was on this podcast awhile back talked about this and how tremendous it was in helping her. Seeing a therapist and me at the same time.
For some reason women always want to fix themselves. I don’t know why that is, but I will say that a lot of women are pursuing dieting and weight loss for the wrong reasons so they end up in this cycle of losing and regaining.
Losing weight just means you’re a smaller version of the body composition you have now. It doesn’t fix you and most likely, you don’t need to be fixed.
You are a great person. I’m sure no one is going to stand at your funeral someday talking about your weight.
They’re going to talk about what a great person you were. I’m all about improving body composition, getting stronger, getting healthier.
But I think some women have this mindset that dieting is going to fix them and how they deal with the stress of their lives, jobs, families, etc. But dieting doesn’t fix that. A smaller body doesn’t fix that.
So, for those of you who have lost weight and regained weight this is something for you to consider as you are reflecting on why you’ve regained weight.
Are you using dieting as a way to fix you? Are you using food as a way to avoid negative feelings or deal with uncomfortable feelings? These are things I see people frequently doing.
Ok, so I went over 4 reasons why you keep regaining weight. Your job now is to dig into the why behind that. It could be one of these things, it could be a combination, or it could be all of the above.
It’s really important before you think about counting calories or doing another diet or program to figure out first and foremost why you keep regaining the weight.
Figuring this out first will help you figure out what you really need to work on next because most likely it’s not more dieting. It may not be weight loss. It may be something else like talking to a therapist.
It may be working on creating foundational habits. I call this working on the basics. It may be working on maintenance and building muscle. As a few examples. Anyway, I hope this episode was helpful to you. I’ll talk to you soon!
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