When You Can’t Keep the Weight Off

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Related Episodes:

• Willpower and Your Thoughts
• Stress Eating

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Full Episode Transcript:

Welcome, welcome. Thanks for being here with me today. So many women have difficulty with keeping weight off after they’ve put in a lot of effort to lose weight in the first place. Which is why I want to dedicate today’s episode to talking about a few things that will really help you to keep the weight off when you’re trying to lose weight.

I just want to quickly mention that at the end of this episode, I’ll tell you about a new free feature that I’m offering on my website that I think you’ll want to take advantage of, while it’s up. It won’t be around for super long though.

Alright, so in this episode, I want to start out by addressing what goes on with your thoughts when you can’t keep the weight off, because this is going to affect your emotions. It will also affect your actions going forward.

I also want to touch on what exactly happens to your body physically when you lose weight loss over and over again, only to gain it back over and over again, and the negative affects it can have long-term if you keep going back-and-forth like this. I also of course want to get into why you can’t keep the weight off if you are having difficulty with this, and also what to do to make it much more likely to have sustainable weight loss. Sustainable weight loss is the kind of weight loss that can prevent all of these negative things that I will touch on today that you may have already experienced yourself.

So I first just want to start out by asking you a question. If you’ve tried to lose weight before, which I’m guessing that you have if you are listening to this episode today, what thoughts or thoughts did you have if you did gain some, or all, of the weight back again? Or perhaps even gained back more weight than you lost?

I’m guessing that they were mostly negative or self-critical thoughts that left you feeling frustrated, a lack of confidence, maybe even exasperation. If you experienced negative thoughts that led to negative feelings, it’s possible you may have been motivated to attempt to lose weight again, trying something different then what you did in a previous attempt. However I’m guessing it was more likely that your thoughts about gaining the weight back left you feeling unmotivated to try again.

This is one of the main challenges that I really wanted to address first because it is probably the most important one to address. It’s only natural to feel those negative emotions after you’ve put in so much effort to lose weight and fail to keep it off. Unfortunately, those negative emotions typically will cause you to feel unmotivated to try again or if you do feel motivated to try again, it is always in the back of your mind that there’s a likely chance that you won’t be able to keep the weight off.

This is because your brain has already gathered some past evidence that you weren’t able to keep the weight off. Therefore, going forward, it takes this past evidence and really focuses on it, which does put up somewhat of a roadblock for you when you do try to attempt weight loss again.

It’s like your brain is in the background saying “you’ve already done this before and you know the results, so why are you doing it again?“

I just want to let you in on a little secret though. The human brain isn’t always correct. Your brain loves to “play it safe” and sort of take the easier route. It also really likes pleasurable things and typically the process of weight loss isn’t always the most pleasurable experience and can sometimes be uncomfortable. Your brain really likes to avoid discomfort. Your brain also loves to conserve energy, and the actions that are taken during an attempt to lose weight typically require some amount of effort. At least some mental, emotional, and usually some physical effort.

You may have heard of the motivational triad, which really was defined by Dr. Lisle and Goldhamer. The motivational triad is comprised of the three main things that assist with keeping humans and animals alive. The motivational triad explains a lot of our actions as humans. The motivational triad consists of seeking pleasure, avoiding pain, discomfort, or danger, and conserving energy.

So, the motivational triad actually comes into play with your brain’s stance in regard to trying to lose weight again despite being unable to keep it off. Your brain would rather avoid the discomfort of the actual weight loss efforts, plus the discomfort of the negative thoughts and feelings that can result from “failing.” Your brain would also rather conserve energy by not putting in the effort to try to lose weight again.

When you have an experience where you lose weight, but gain some or all of the weight back, your brain is validated by the past evidence of not being able to keep the weight off. Therefore, it is going to try to convince you to not try again, with negative thoughts that lead to negative feelings that typically aren’t great drivers to continue with your efforts.

That brings me to the next piece that I wanted to discuss which is the emotions that can occur when you can’t keep the weight off and how these really play a part in your future actions and results going forward.

So as you just heard me mention, some negative feelings can be created from the negative thoughts that come about with gaining the weight back. What I mean by negative feelings or emotions is basically any emotion that doesn’t feel good to you. For example, sadness, irritation, anger, confusion, guilt.

When you experience a negative emotion, the normal human reaction is to try to get this negative emotion to go away. That’s because of that motivational triad. You’re trying to avoid discomfort and that negative emotion is uncomfortable. Unfortunately, negative emotions also really heavily influence your next actions.

For example, think about a time when you may have gotten angry when someone cut you off on the highway. As a result, did you do something like smile and wave, or was it something more like honk the horn, grip the steering wheel and tense up, or maybe even call them a name under your breath? I’m guessing most likely you didn’t smile sweetly and wave at them. I know I certainly wouldn’t automatically do that as my reaction.

The same thing happens with many other scenarios or circumstances that you experience personally. This certainly doesn’t exclude a negative feeling that occurs when you gain the 10 pounds back out of the 12 that you recently lost. Or even if you gained 5 pounds back of the 20 that you recently lost. Neither of these are the result that you wanted, therefore you’re going to tend to have some negative thoughts and negative feelings about these results. Depending on how much weight was gained back, the degree of negative thoughts and feelings can certainly vary.

Now sometimes you can bounce back with a negative emotion such as frustration or anger and be motivated to attempt again just to “prove “to yourself or to someone else that you can do it. If you’ve ever had this happened to you though, and you do attempt again and fail again, did you likely feel like you wanted to attempt yet again? Most likely not. And I just want to mention that’s not due to any fault of yours, that’s just how your human brain works. It wants to prevent that discomfort of going through all of that again. It thinks it’s trying to protect you. It believes it’s doing what’s best for you.

So besides the negative feeling or emotion not exactly promoting or providing any motivation to do another attempt at weight loss, there’s something else negative that results. What also happens is, when you get stuck in that negative emotion that occurs when you can’t keep the weight off, it prevents you from really being able to think about some other options that you might be able to try.

When you’re so caught up in the negative thoughts and negative feelings you’re experiencing, you’re less likely to be spending your energy thinking about what things you may be able to try next that you haven’t tried, or thinking about why you may not have been able to keep the weight off and making a change.

I recently experienced this myself, not with anything food-related, but something in my business. I was so stuck in a feeling of frustration, that it was blocking me from being able to think of more options to try. Once someone pointed this out to me, I was able to get out of that frustration, into a more curious mindset. I was able to start brainstorming a list of things to try, and what do you know, the second thing on the list ended up being the winner.

So let’s get out of the mind a little and talk about what happens physically to your body when you can’t keep the weight off. Just to get a little bit “science-y” for a moment, your body is an amazing thing that regulates constantly. It is always trying to be in a steady state, which is called homeostasis. This just means that your body is working constantly to keep everything functioning nicely. For example, it works to maintain stable temperatures, regulate your hormones, balance electrolytes, keep oxygen levels sufficient, even regulate hunger.

The primary portion of the brain that is involved in homeostasis is the hypothalamus. Your hypothalamus also happens to be very much involved with hunger and metabolism, which obviously play a large part in your body weight and composition. By body composition, I mean the percentages of body fat and muscle you have.

Because your brain, specifically the hypothalamus, is focused on homeostasis, it doesn’t love drastic changes. That actually makes sense right? Drastic changes are going to “throw off the system“. Your brain and body are going to have to work harder to achieve that homeostasis. We already know that your brain loves to conserve energy.

So if you attempt to lose weight by making really large or even drastic changes with the amount of calories you’re consuming or burning, your brain and body are not going to like that very much. It may be physically uncomfortable for you, causing symptoms like headaches, weakness, fatigue, or even just being in that discomfort of being overly hungry.

And of course, your brain does not like these drastic changes either. It has done quite well thus far, so anything drastic that it has to work harder at, it is not going to be in favor of. It’s going to try to continue to maintain what you had going before.  So essentially, without getting into all the little physiologic details, if you make really drastic changes to try to lose weight, your brain and body have a much more difficult time regulating, and the system that had been working fairly well before, is “thrown off“ a bit.  This unfortunately all leads to a higher likelihood of gaining the weight back, and sometimes even gaining more weight than you originally lost in the first place.

When this occurs over and over again, as it often does with many fad diets, your brain and body have a harder time with this regulation, and it gets messy. When you make much smaller changes to your eating behaviors and even exercise behaviors, your brain is much happier, so to speak.

It doesn’t have to adjust to such drastic changes. It’s easier for it to regulate your metabolism in a healthy way. It’s easier to keep the weight off when you are trying to lose weight. When weight loss efforts are slow and deliberate, it’s much easier for your hypothalamus to handle everything that is involved in weight loss, such as hunger signals, metabolism, hormones, etc. And just a side note if you’re interested, some of the main players with the hormones that are involved in weight management are insulin, leptin, and ghrelin.

So this brings me to the next thing I wanted to answer for you, why you may not be able to keep the weight off. One of the reasons is that, as you may have guessed just based on what I just discussed, is that the changes you are making to your calorie intake or number of calories burned is too large of a change.

Part of the reason is the physiologic aspect of it, meaning what’s actually happening in your body, which is that whole regulatory process involving the hypothalamus. Also, large changes are really uncomfortable for your body, sensation-wise. Often, when trying to lose weight, people are limiting their calorie intake, so they can burn more than they consume. Which, is what must occur to lose weight.

When you are severely limiting your intake of calories though, especially compared to what you’re used to, you are most likely going to experience lots of physical discomfort. Physical discomfort like the stomach grumbling, maybe some nausea, headaches, feeling of weakness, fatigue, maybe even getting irritable more quickly.

Thinking about that motivational triad again, your brain doesn’t like discomfort, right? So it not going to likely want to continue what you’re doing, because of all that discomfort. It would be much more pleasurable to just go back to overeating or eating lots of sugar-y foods, right?

Well, same thing goes for if you are exercising substantially more to burn many more calories than what you’re used to. This is a lot of work for your body, and your body likes to conserve energy. It may also be really physically uncomfortable to get all that exercise in, making your brain want to quit.So you may start out with enough willpower to exercise way more than what you’re used to, however this will not last.

Also, whenever you exercise significantly, your body is going to be more hungry. This is because of the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus is used to regulating your hunger levels with the amount of calories you are burning. So if you’re exercising more, the hypothalamus will think, “hey, I need to signal to her that she needs to eat more calories” and it’ll start the chain reaction that needs to occur to enable this. If you use willpower to resist those hunger signals or cravings, you’ll be restricting yourself from a significant amount of calories that your brain and body feels it needs, and you’ll likely be very uncomfortable. This means, your brain isn’t going to be too happy with you.

Or, what also happens is because you’re so hungry after all of the exercise every day in an attempt to burn hundreds of more calories than you’re used to, you will end up eating most or all of those calories back or sometimes even over-eating, which is definitely going to be a topic for another podcast episode.

So, what should you think about doing instead when you can’t keep the weight off? A much more effective and healthy way to go about losing weight is to make small changes that your brain and body will like much better. It can certainly take a longer period of time to see the results when you were making smaller, more gradual changes. However, since that time is going to pass by anyway, you’re really not losing anything, right? Time passes regardless of if you are doing a 30-day fad diet to lose 10 pounds versus making true or eating behavior changes that lead to better eating habits.

When you lose weight, then gain it back, then lose it again with another fat diet, then gaining it back, you end up truly losing all that time, right? Contrast that with slowly making eating behavior changes as well as changes with your mindset, that will lead to healthier eating habits. Sustainable weight loss is WAY more likely to occur, if you are wanting to lose weight that is.

Now, you may find that a certain detox diet or fad diet works for you short term, but I challenge you to answer the question, has it worked for you long-term? Or are you still in that weight loss battle?

When you are patient with weight loss and look at it as a lifestyle change, more specifically eating behavior change, you’re seeing the bigger picture and also more likely to enjoy the process along the way. If you start to get a little bit “graspy” or rushed with trying to lose a large amount of weight in a certain period of time, usually a short period of time such as a month or two, you’re more likely to not be able to keep the weight off. Then you’ll experience those negative thoughts and feelings as a result of not being able to keep the weight off.

So, another reason why you may find that you can’t keep the weight off, is that whole willpower thing. If you haven’t listened to the episode titled “Willpower and Your Thoughts”, which is episode number two, then definitely go back and listen to that one as I get very in depth with this topic. You can also find a link to that episode on the episode page under the “related episodes” section.

Willpower is something that everyone has. Unfortunately, it is temporary, partly because it requires way too much mental effort and is just too uncomfortable. Remember, your brain likes to conserve energy and avoid discomfort or pain, right? So willpower may help you to significantly decrease your calorie consumption or significantly increase the number of calories burned via exercising at first, but it won’t last.

Instead, you must change your thoughts from those negative ones to positive ones so they generate feelings that are highly motivating, rather than feelings that are de-motivating. As you learned earlier, those motivating feelings, which are going to be positive emotions, are going to help you to keep going despite any challenges that get in the way. They’ll motivate you to assess what you’re doing and make any changes necessary. They’ll motivate you to actually find some enjoyment in the process, rather than thinking it’s this massive chore.

They’ll also help to keep you looking towards your results, rather than at any past evidence of failure. So you see how powerful those positive thoughts can be? They end up producing positive emotions which end up being the driving force that leads to results you want.

So to summarize, when you can’t keep the weight off while trying to lose weight, make some small changes that are way more comfortable and think of some thoughts you can have that are positive and will help you along the way. And if you aren’t getting the results you want, then don’t let negative feelings get in the way of being able to think of some new things to try or to seek out help.

You absolutely can lose weight in a healthy and sustainable way. You just have to look at all the things, your thoughts, feelings, and actions. And if you need help, that’s what I’m here for.

Take care, and I’ll talk with you soon.