Unhealthy Habits That Cause You To Gain Weight & How To Prevent It
Last Updated on 01/01/2022 by Nicky
Bad Habits That Cause Weight Gain
Does this internal monologue sound familiar?
“Yes, I’m finally at my goal weight!”
Six months later…
“What? I’ve regained 20 pounds! What happened?!”
Have you ever been in a situation where you made it to your goal weight only to find six months to a year later that you gain all that weight back and then some?
Losing weight and then gaining it back almost feels worse than not losing the weight at all you feel even more like a failure.
Perhaps you were celebrating with people about your accomplishment only to have to face them a year down the road in the same or worse condition than you were in when you were celebrating.
What can you do to prevent this yo-yo diet cycle from occurring?
How can you make sure that you don’t end up in this boat of losing weight and gaining it back and then losing it again?
I have some tips and tricks to help you not to regain that healthy unhealthy fat back onto your frame which we will go over today.
What Is Yo-Yo Dieting?
But first what is yo-yo dieting?
Yo-yo dieting is this cyclical up-and-down weight loss/weight gain game that resembles the up-and-down motion of a yo-yo.
This can be dangerous to your body because of the stress it puts on your organs.
Yo-yo dieting can also increase muscle loss and they put you at higher risk for developing type two diabetes.
So if you’re trying to lose weight and keep it off I can tell you right now that muscle loss and diabetes are not your friends.
We definitely want to avoid these two conditions at all costs if we want to maintain or have a healthy body.
So now that you understand some of the dangers of yo-yo dieting let’s jump into this post and explore some of the reasons why we gain unhealthy fat back in the first place.
Related: yo-yo dieting
The Unhealthy Habits That Are Causing Us To Regain Our Weight Back & How To Stop It
1)Stress eating
OK so one of the biggest reasons why we gain weight after a weight loss victory is because we are stressed.
Stress eating, also known as a form of emotional eating, is when we use food to cope with an emotionally distressing issue problem that we’re facing in our lives.
These issues could be something like loss of a job and illness, loss of a family member, dealing with rape or abuse, and many other highly stressful and traumatic situations that we find ourselves in.
Because eating is so pleasurable and it’s not something illegal like abusing drugs in it is something very easy to turn to when we don’t know how to deal with a situation that is painful.
And unfortunately, when we eat emotionally because we’re stressed, we don’t in the reach for the apple or the carrot we reach for the macaroni and cheese or the chocolate cake.
What’s important to remember is this: the reason why we gained weight in the first place is usually because of some sort of painful trauma that we didn’t want to deal with it.
So if you lose weight but still haven’t dealt with that initial trauma then you are very likely to regain that weight back because you still haven’t dealt with the reason why you gained weight in the first place.
That’s why it’s very important to get help in the form of counseling, prayer, journaling, or accountability partners.
Speaking of prayer I do have a free weight loss prayer journal that you can access by clicking here below:
Click here to access the free Weight Loss Prayer journal in my Healthy Body Resource Library
Doing so can help transform you into the person who doesn’t use food for comfort.
No I’m not saying that eating shouldn’t be pleasurable or enjoyable but what I am saying is that it shouldn’t be abused in order to make ourselves feel better about our lives.
If you believe that you are emotionally eating then one place I encourage you to go to is Online-Therapy.com.
They have caring therapists who are waiting and eager to help you overcome this problem.
2)Not tracking
Oh my goodness y’all I hate tracking what I eat.
I hate tracking calories and fat grams and macros.
But it doesn’t matter what I hate.
I know that when I consistently track how many calories I’m eating I lose weight.
And guess what?
As soon as I stop tracking because I think I’ve got this I don’t need to do this anymore I gain the weight back every time.
No matter how inconvenient it is to record what you eat you should still journal it, enter it into an app or whatever you choose to do no matter how annoying it is (and it is).
But it’s one of the most important tools you can use to lose weight and keep it off.
The app I use is called Lose It! (when I actually track my meals…yes I’m so guilty of not doing this) and I will leave a link so that you can check it out.
3)Too many snacks
One of the biggest problems that plague us in our snacks.
Snacks typically should be around 100 cal maybe 200 but once you start getting over that 200 mark you now turn your snack into a meal.
But you didn’t count it as a meal even though that’s truly what it was.
So in essence of what you’ve really done is added a fourth meal to your day. (Ugh I’m so talking to myself right now!)
It’s very easy to underestimate the number of calories and fat in the snack because they look so small and you think oh that’s not really gonna make a huge difference it but if you eat a 250 cal snack every day and possibly two times a day that’s 500 extra calories.
500 cal for seven days it is 3500.
3500 is the amount of calories in 1 pound of fat.
Do y’all see where I’m going with this?
If you eliminated that snack that is one extra pound per week that you could be losing.
Which means that’s 52 extra pounds so that you could be losing in one year.
Pretty awesome ladies, right!?
4)Lost Weight By Eating Foods You Didn’t Like
Another reason why people gain weight after losing a significant amount of weight is because they lost weight by eating food that they don’t really like.
This is like when people do those fad diets and they eat things that they know that they won’t eat for the rest of their lives.
So yes thet may lose 12 pounds in a week but by the next week or so they’ve gained most of it back (I know someone who’s done this…just saying)
That’s why when you lose weight you need to do it eating foods that you love and you know but you won’t mind eating them for the rest of your life.
Otherwise, you’re gonna lose a ton of weight and then not too long after you just gonna gain it all back in.
Here’s an exercise to try: make a list of all the healthy foods that you love.
There may only be 10 or so items on the list and if that’s the case focus heavily on those 10 healthy food but hopefully your list will be a lot longer.
Then you can start to create meal plans around the foods that are healthy and taste good to you.
5) You Weren’t Consistent
Another major issue when it comes to yo-yo dieting is not being consistent.
Let’s say you lost 50 pounds.
Now you’re in maintenance mode.
When you get to maintenance mode guess what you still have to continue to eat healthy.
Maybe you don’t have to be as restrictive as you once were but you still need to keep track of what you eat and you still need to focus heavily on eating healthy.
Once you stop being consistent that weight will slowly but surely creep back up on your body and before you know it you’ll be asking yourself in the age-old question how did I get here.
In order to lose weight and keep it off, you have to remain hyper-focused and vigilant to make sure the weight doesn’t come back
6) Stopped Working Out
This is another thing that people miss when it comes to maintaining their weight loss.
If you worked out in order to lose weight you’re going to have to continue working out in order to keep that weight off.
Unless you restrict your calorie intake even further than you were during your weight loss journey.
If you don’t restrict your caloric intake and you stop working out that weight will return with a vengeance.
And that’s not what we wanted obviously so if you were a runner during your weight loss journey you need to continue running during your weight loss and maintenance phase or you need to find another comparable exercises that will help you maintain your new physique.
7) Too Restrictive
The last point that I want to make is about how restrictive people can be when they’re losing weight.
And I totally get it.
You want to lose weight as fast as you can so you start restricting your calories and your fat grams thinking this will help me get into my new body as fast as possible.
And that’s true you will achieve your weight loss goals faster when you’re super restrictive with what you eat.
But can you maintain that restrictiveness?
Can you continue to not eat bread or carbs for the long-haul.
Or will you start craving those delectable pastries and bread so when you go on your European vacation?
Are you going to be able to say no to the french fries and the ice cream that you’ve enjoyed for all of these years?
If the answer is no then you need to find a way that you can incorporate these foods into your weight loss plan.
Otherwise, you’ll find yourself falling off the wagon over and over again.
Conclusion To How To Avoid Regaining Your Weight Back
All right, ladies, that’s all of the points I want to cover today.
I want to encourage you to not despair if you have lost weight and then gained it back because there absolutely is hope.
First of all what you need to remember is that you’ve done it once and if you’ve done it once you can do it again.
It’s very possible so don’t feel bad.
Don’t beat yourself up.
Just remember what the remember the healthy habits that you built that helped you achieve your goal the first time in reincorporate them into your life.
But this time make sure that you are creating a true lifestyle change and not something that is not sustainable.
I want to direct you to a resource and then I create it it’s called Steadfast and it is about a yo-yo dieting.
I cover in-depth the topic of yo-yo dieting and how to keep your weight off.
These are principles that I have to also remind myself of to make sure that I don’t fall off the weight-loss wagon.
Click Here To Learn More About My Book Steadfast
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