How Do You Maintain Weight Loss?

I just ran across yet another article in a blog asking about how someone can maintain a weight loss. This person said they lost 20 pounds and regained it all in 16 weeks...oh no!

I was going to quote the article in question (I try to avoid just tossing around crap into the blog without some pointer to where I got the information...it's bad form not to) but thought, y'know, I've run into this several times before, it's like some kind of group whine. Why not just do a quick Google and post the results?

"Maintain weight loss".

Holy shnikeys...

I'm not a diet guru. I'm not a scientist (although I enjoy science-related articles). I'm not a believer in woo, and like to fancy myself a bit of a skeptic.

But from what I can find on the topic, the answer is quite simple. The person who gained it back didn't change their lifestyle. They went on a "diet", then went off it.

"Yay! I lost twenty pounds! Time to have a cookie because I deserve it!"

No. You can lose weight temporarily by dieting. Eventually the diet mutates into a number of, "Oh, what would it hurt?", and "Just one more"'s until your waistline gets bigger and bigger and your skinny jeans make you look like a stuff sausage.

The answer is to change your lifestyle.

That's right, you need to actually change your lifestyle to accommodate a less calorie-centric lifestyle. Just check this article out.

If you enjoy your happy pasta-carb-sweets-relaxing lifestyle, then the lifestyle that keeps pounds off sucks. Go ahead and admit it. You don't like the sweaty life, then living it will suck. So you have to evaluate if the weight loss is worth changing gears.

There are times I hate my new lifestyle. I force myself to go to the gym during the week. An hour of walking the treadmill and playing with weight machines still hasn't seemed to make me a sweet prize on the beach, but I still do it since there's a pre-paid year's membership that would be wasted without it. As I type this I'm biking on my recumbent stationary bike and sweating like a pig (thank $DEITY for the USB keyboard or my laptop would be a mess). I've burned 239 calories so far according to the readout of supposed burned calories while surfing the web and working on this. And I'm still pdaling away...about 8 mph and 4.33 miles. I think...hope it's not in metric...

Anyway, lifestyle. I had the surgery (duh...I mean, Barry Atric?), and the real benefit to it is that it frees people with my brain wiring from having to come up with reasons to not indulge in what other people want you to do to fit in and end up sliding up the scale. Yes, RnY reduces your body's ability to absorb as many calories and that helps. But in the end your body heals up to the point where you can still cheat it and gain the weight back. A pouch isn't going to stop you from slowly slurping ice cream and shakes or pureeing Oreos. Eating a meal slowly will allow it to slip right through the pouch.

Okay, sugars can cause you to have cramps and explosive poo. Gross, but true. You need to know that if you're considering the surgery anyway. Also you'll be more sensitive to certain foods...I've noticed that if I try having too much of a portion of pasta, for example, I don't quite feel as well as usual. Not sick, but not exactly the best of shape either.

The more in tune you are with your body the more you notice the effect.

Where was I? Oh yes. The surgery gives you an excuse. I have fear of certain foods; go to a restaurant, and you don't know what's on the steak or in that burger. You don't know if the oil something is fried in will cause a quick run to the restroom or cramps that will make you want to vomit. So I would like certain things like pancakes from the breakfast buffet, but...not worth it. I recently went to a farewell lunch at a chinese buffet in town for some short-term coworkers moving into sunnier pastures...and ate nothing. The stuff I enjoy are things I shouldn't have because they could all trigger some nasty side effects. I could probably have lettuce and some cheese and egg, yes, but...nope. Not worth it when I had something packed for lunch that I know I like and tolerate.

The excuse is just to explain...I had surgery. Stomach doesn't work like yours.

And it's true.

A friend of mine had a birthday party. My wife and I were talking about plans for it, and I can take my lunch (I actually ended up having half a Panera sandwich before going, since his party was in mid-afternoon), and my wife said she couldn't take something if she didn't have lunch because it would be a social faux-pas. "It's rude!" she proclaimed.

I don't see a problem with it. If your diet is different than other peoples, whether by preference or choice or surgery or a combination (as it is with me), I don't see a problem with reducing their burden of having to accommodate me by supplying food for me. I feel bad for schools where one kid with a peanut allergy means no kid in the class is allowed to have a PB&J sandwich because Frankie could fall over with a reaction; the many have to change their choices because of one person. I don't want to be that one person.

So I take stuff with me.

The surgery means that I take stuff in to some places with me. Fast food joints don't care, especially if I order a water and am with other people eating their fare. Most small restaurants...like the buffet breakfast I went to and the chinese place...didn't charge anything because I didn't eat. Some could probably be set right if I showed them the ugly scar on my gut. Apparently most people don't know how to react to that and it's easier to back off than pursue a ten dollar bill for food not eaten.

I've talked about the surgical help. But I did this once before. I lost a couple hundred pounds several years ago, back around 2001, by going on a very low calorie diet. It was about 600 calories a day, and I lost a lot in just a year's time.

There are those who shudder at this. "How can he do it!? It's not sustainable!"

The only side effect were gallstones. My gall bladder had to be removed after ending up with acute pancreatitis. I just lost weight too fast, I guess.

But the diet itself I didn't mind. Why?

I have aspergers, and some of the traits lend itself well to changing lifestyle at times. In particular, if you change a habit over the course of a few weeks and don't alter them again, I get into a "groove" that tends to work for me. I had a lifestyle that enabled me to eat a certain schedule with certain things like tracking calorie counts with foods available at the supermarket and I got into a routine of when to buy what. It was relatively cheap and efficient, too. I took all my meals with me. And also thanks to my mental wiring, I quite frankly didn't give a @#$ what people thought of the fat guy carrying a plastic Glad box with an Egg Beater sandwich into a restaurant and ordering water.

Well, that's not entirely true. After I started dating my now-wife, and meeting her family which included a person well versed in managing food services, along with the constant disapproval from a few people close to me I did start changing my habits again. I started to fall back into my depression behaviors, namely not giving a damn anymore about what I'd done. So I gained it back. So while the battle of not caring about what the general public thought was true, the war with those behind enemy lines did kind of wear on me; my environment was changing and I in the end used it as an excuse to go back to my old habits. Even that's not entirely true...I gained most of the weight back, not all, and it was through new sets of bad habits.

I know I wasn't microwaving pizza rolls in the middle of the night to gain the weight that the surgery took off, for example.

The point is that when I lost weight, major weight, both times it came through some form of change, not just a temporary gimmick. No pills or special berries or what is being touted on TV. I had to change my lifestyle.

Some diet plans even incorporate this. Weight Watchers is partially successful because of this. It's a diet that "you can live with" and "incorporate into a healthy lifestyle". Atkins becomes a religion for their followers. If you can get "into" a diet, the you're pretty set to keep your weight off. But for people that just crash diet or go a month without their Starbucks and Dunkin' D visits...nope.

The answer is simple. The implementation is not.

Notice there's a difference.

I have come to the realization that my surgery, in my case, was largely a crutch to institute a long term change as a get-out-of-jail card. "I had surgery, I can't have your pie." Unsaid: don't be offended. I'll get sick if I eat your food, but I'm sure it's very good, and believe me there's a part of me that would love to dive in.

I said I have aspergers, so this also helps in situations that I don't fully understand, like the birthday party. I don't see it as a faux-pas to take something with me if I like it for food. Other people...normals...apparently get offended. Well now I have an ace. I had the surgery. I can't indulge. I came here because I wanted to see my friend and wish him a happy birthday, and I appreciated being included in the invitations. It was a lovely time. My wife and son had some food that was prepared. The extent of my food intake was a slice of cheese, and it was more than enough for me.

When it comes to food there are so many implications for society that we don't even realize it anymore. It has it's own rituals, its own meaning. It's an insult; I stopped trying to cook post-surgery after my wife accused me of trying to make her fat (I wasn't; I was fascinated by the disconnect between hunger and sensory input I had shortly after the surgery, and was exploring how wonderful everything seemed even though I wasn't hungry for it. So WEIRD!). People get offended if you aren't eating their beans at a family picnic, or don't have their burgers and hot dogs, even though most of the time it's something they threw together in an hour and not something they labored over for hours. We eat to comfort (you never heard of comfort food?), to encourage (Want ice cream? Win the game! Want dessert? Finish your spinach...), to socialize (farewell dinners, birthday party in the conference room), to make friends (snacky tray for work anyone? Be a hero and get a box of bagels!), to pass time,...it's confusing for those of us that aren't wired like the majority are.

So when I say it's an easy answer, it's true. Change your lifestyle. Doing it? Not so easy. Finding a way to properly frame your changes, your perspective, that's the key. In order to keep that weight off you need to figure out how to ask the right question.

It's a long trip. Grab a six-inch ham sub at Subway without the mayo and some walking shoes and head down the road until you find the answer. If you're serious about the change the answer will come to you.