To play devil’s advocate against PQ’s post, I think the analogy that “regainers are like people who stay in unhealthy jobs and relationships” oversimplifies the matter.

I mean, let’s face it. Not regaining is really really really hard. I lost a ton of weight in college, and never intended to regain it, and a day never passed since that loss during which I didn’t worry about my weight: and yet it somehow crept back.

I think PQ the fact that you are more seeing silent dead blogs out there on the internets as your examples, instead of hearing face-to-face narratives about how regain happens in person, might affect your view. Who here has been to weight watchers meetings where someone has talked about how they’ve lost dozens of lbs only to have regained it all back? I mean, it happens, and I don’t think it’s a reflection of some major failing or psychological issue on the part of the gainer.

Also, you don’t know how nesting with a new boyfriend, or pregnancy, or a stressful life change, or an aging metabolism, or a blown knee might affect you. Ultimately, it’s an amazing achievement that you’ve come this far. But like the poster above said, “pride goeth before the fall.” Talk to us about how you never regained when you’re 41 years old with two kids. You were getting up there near 400 lbs in your early 20s. Something in your life beyond the typical American careless diet caused that immense weight and that demon is not necessarily so easily slain. Or dragon. What have you. :) Your post is a little like Lindsay Lohan coming out of rehab tomorrow and declaring that she will never be like those failures who go back on the crack rock.

I don’t mean to sound harsh. I just think it’s worth an honest response. I mean, I was just reading that Body of Work blog, with the girl who had gastric bypass, and she’s talking about how she overate rapaciously at her brother’s wedding to the point of physical illness this weekend. One would think, “Who the hell DOES that?” Again, for some people the monkey’s always ready to hop back on your back.

I would just say that overall, whether you have a lot or a little to lose, many many people are seriously committed for a time and then go back to eating poorly. Sometimes not just because they feel like having pizza for lunch but because their mother died or they are under extreme stress like licensing exams or anything that triggers the change.

Not that the PQ does not know that; I am sure she does. And like she says, she was referring to actual instances not dieters in general. I don’t think she was going for a competition between those who have a lot to lose and those who have a little (and anyway everyone has an different idea of that!)

As you know already, what determines weight-loss success is not just a blossoming of inner gumption. It’s not a raw Triumph of the Will, in other words, so much as it is a whole, fairly undramatic congeries of factors, often environmental as well as internal, that collectively make it possible to first develop a new set of habits, and then to stay uninterruptedly within the groove of those new habits long enough to pay down your calorie surplus.

If you can keep from being interrupted in your good habits, you’ll keep off the weight that you’ve lost. If you are interrupted in them by illness, injury, unhappiness, the influence of another person, forgetfulness, a different job, bad weather, a child, or the like–and such changes are common in many lives, at least over the medium term–you’ll have to work at coming up with more new habits that can take account of that changed life situation.

If you can stick to a routine–almost any routine, really–you can lose weight, since the helpful behaviors will become habitual. It’s just that you also need to be able to arrive at other, entirely new routines as your circumstances change. And this is where many people stumble, at least a little.

In other words, willing your own sense of urgency not to fade is necessary, but probably not sufficient.

Anyway, I still plan on being someone who keeps the weight off and I’m not ashamed to say so. If that makes me proud or arrogant, so be it. Part of the reason I think I will succeed is because I *don’t* let myself think that I will gain it back. If you listen to the top athletes talk about their sports, they are in it to win it. I have to think the same way. I know regaining is a possibility and I know there will probably be times in my life where I regain 10 or 20 pounds, but I’m not going to let myself get morbidly obese again. Why? Because I say so. And that’s the only reason I need, really, unless someone locks me in a room and only feeds me Twinkies for several months.

Also, I don’t think I *ever* get the right to cast judgement on other people, five years from now of fifty.

I’ve been working on making changes to my lifestyle since March. It’s been a slow process, one thing at a time. I’ve lost 20 pounds and have “several” to go. It’s not a habit yet, but I have hope it will get there.