Stopping the YoYoing weight cycle

[augeleven]

I've been struggling with my weight for a while (adulthood?). I can nail down my food for a month or four, but then I fall off the wagon and go on an ice cream and fast food bender. Looking back I have trouble
1. late night (post workout) snacking
2. after School commute snacking
3. stress eating
4. falling off the wagon and giving up

I know there a lot of people here who have had success with weight loss, and I know this is covered all the time, but maybe these questions are different(?)

1.How did you stop the yo-yoing of the weight?
2.For those that workout late at night, how did you deal with being super hungry right before bed?
3.Did you have some kind of trigger food that you needed to completely abstain from?

I think I'm going to take a page from @alek s log and start tracking my food in my log for a bit. If anybody wants to stalk me there and heckle me for bad decision making, feel free.

[Murelli]

I've been struggling with my weight for a while (adulthood?). I can nail down my food for a month or four, but then I fall off the wagon and go on an ice cream and fast food bender. Looking back I have trouble
1. late night (post workout) snacking
2. after School commute snacking
3. stress eating
4. falling off the wagon and giving up

I know there a lot of people here who have had success with weight loss, and I know this is covered all the time, but maybe these questions are different(?)

1.How did you stop the yo-yoing of the weight?
2.For those that workout late at night, how did you deal with being super hungry right before bed?
3.Did you have some kind of trigger food that you needed to completely abstain from?

I think I'm going to take a page from @alek s log and start tracking my food in my log for a bit. If anybody wants to stalk me there and heckle me for bad decision making, feel free.

1) Reverse dieting after a weight loss and maintaining for a while is pretty useful in not having a rebound after a prolonged period of caloric deficit. I can't handle a lot more than 8 weeks of fat loss at a time, so when I begin to get cranky, drained and my training starts to suffer too much I start a reverse diet;
2) I eat my biggest meal at night after I workout (dinner);
3) No. I drink beer, eat ice cream, eat barbecue, eat chocolate, drink milk, etc. Well, I only drink zero sugar sodas for a while and that is pretty good.

[alek]

I've been struggling with my weight for a while (adulthood?). I can nail down my food for a month or four, but then I fall off the wagon and go on an ice cream and fast food bender. Looking back I have trouble
1. late night (post workout) snacking
2. after School commute snacking
3. stress eating
4. falling off the wagon and giving up

I know there a lot of people here who have had success with weight loss, and I know this is covered all the time, but maybe these questions are different(?)

1.How did you stop the yo-yoing of the weight?
2.For those that workout late at night, how did you deal with being super hungry right before bed?
3.Did you have some kind of trigger food that you needed to completely abstain from?

I think I'm going to take a page from @alek s log and start tracking my food in my log for a bit. If anybody wants to stalk me there and heckle me for bad decision making, feel free.

Woohoo!! Trendsetter!!

1) I have historically been an ectomorph/hard ganier. I was probably 140# at 6' until I was 23/24 when I started working at an Italian restaurant. I was at about 175# just before I started training in August 2016, so 34 years old then--skinny fat, too. I put on about 35 pounds from 8/15 to 1/18, but still skinny fat. I ate whatever I wanted whenever I wanted.

It wasn't until finding Feigenbaum on SS's forum that I got any kind of nutrition education with respect to lifting. His article To Be a Beast is a must read in my opinion. His protein optimization article is good, too, and the various YouTubes about nutrition. I'm very, very slowly losing weight right now, and most of it has got to be fat because my umbilicus measurement is decreasing but my chest and arms are getting bigger. Thank you @Hanley. So getting less and less skinny fat now. My chest measurement is between 45" and 46" while my umbilicus is 38.5".

2) I workout super early most days.

3) There are things that I'm not eating right now, but that's because my goal is fat-loss, not weight-loss. So I stay away from really high-fat foods for now. When I get my umbilicus where I'm comfortable with it, then I'll eat those things again.

Right now, the most important thing for me is to get close to 1g/lb bodyweight with protein and keep fat calories low(er). As long as I make progress with that throughout the day, there are no "off limit" foods.

Good luck with the logging!!

[platypus]

I've been struggling with my weight for a while (adulthood?). I can nail down my food for a month or four, but then I fall off the wagon and go on an ice cream and fast food bender. Looking back I have trouble
1. late night (post workout) snacking
2. after School commute snacking
3. stress eating
4. falling off the wagon and giving up

Items 1 and 2 can be solved by changing what you snack on, and filling up on healthy food at mealtimes. Seriously, if you find yourself snacking on chips or poptarts and you just get rid of it and start snacking on baby carrots or celery instead that can make a huge difference. Plus if you get plenty of good food at mealtimes you won't be as hungry the rest of the time.

What are you snacking on? I used to keep pop tarts and chips around as snack food. I had to switch to celery

I know there a lot of people here who have had success with weight loss, and I know this is covered all the time, but maybe these questions are different(?)

1.How did you stop the yo-yoing of the weight?
2.For those that workout late at night, how did you deal with being super hungry right before bed?
3.Did you have some kind of trigger food that you needed to completely abstain from?

I think I'm going to take a page from @alek s log and start tracking my food in my log for a bit. If anybody wants to stalk me there and heckle me for bad decision making, feel free.

1. I quit doing drastic bulks and cuts. I got up to around 235 at some point last year and realized I was sick of it. The bulking never made me muscular, and the cutting never gave me abzz. I just alternated between skinny-fat and chubby.
2. At first I made my last meal of the day just meat and veggies. I fill up real quick on meat, whereas carbs often make me hungrier.
3. I had to quit brining junk food to my house. I still eat it, but I don't have it at home and it's never a part of my planned meals.

Small changes can really make a huge difference. I got from 235 down to 225 by stopping my meals before I wanted to puke (I was bulking previously). Got stuck at 225 for a few weeks, then went from 225 down to 207 by only buying healthy food. I don't have any junk food in my house to eat now. I'd load up on junk at parties and stuff though. I cut out starchy carbs for a bit around this time but it didn't really accelerate the weight loss so I added them back in. After I got stuck around 207 for a bit I started being more careful about planning my meals and using proper portion sizes and I'm down to about 200 after a couple weeks of that. I'm actually eating junk food more often now than I did coming down from 225 but I've learned to control myself at this point. Previously if someone brought donuts to the office and there were 6 left over, I'd eat all six. Now I'll only do one. It's all about making small changes.

If you're an actor or bodybuilder who's 12 weeks out from needing to be absolutely shredded, dieting will be more difficult. But if you're a normal person just trying to improve your body composition steady changes in the right direction will add up to big differences over time. I know a lot of people who have gone on the paleo diet, lost 10lbs or so, then had no idea where to go from there. They get convinced that they need a different diet, so they go keto or something. And then they lose 10 more pounds and at that point there's really nothing else they can cut out of their diet and they get stuck. If they just kept making small adjustments to their diet they'd be able to keep manipulating their body composition in a good direction.

[BenM]

I have about a million things I could write here, having dropped almost 90lbs in your freedom units, and kept it off for a couple of years now, I've spent a lot of time going down the weight loss rabbit hole. This thread is full of lots of good advice. But it can become overwhelming if you let it, and that's when people tend to go YOLO.

If you take one thing from this thread, it should be this:

If they just kept making small adjustments to their diet they'd be able to keep manipulating their body composition in a good direction.

Just look for the low hanging fruit to start with. If it's snack food, replace the snack with a lower calorie alternative that's just as nice. If it's stress eating, find a way to reduce the stress. Just do one of these things, let it bed in for a couple of weeks, and see what happens, once you've got that new habit nailed, find another one.

All of that said

1.How did you stop the yo-yoing of the weight?
2.For those that workout late at night, how did you deal with being super hungry right before bed?
3.Did you have some kind of trigger food that you needed to completely abstain from?

1. For me, tracking my food and weight daily has been a godsend. I think my eating habits are probably slightly disordered, but I'd rather that than get fat again, so it's the lesser of two evils. Ultimately the goal is to stop tracking, but having been on a couple of holidays from tracking and lost control, I think that's a way off yet. In the past couple of years, I've managed to keep my weight within a 6-7kg band for the most part, when I get heavier than I'm comfortable with I cut back a bit.

2. I eat right before bed! That's the thing, there is no problem with doing that so long as your overall calories are in check and you pay some attention to the macros of what you eat - there's evidence out there that eating a larger bolus of protein before bed is good for MPS so yeah - you can also make gainz this way. For me my pre-bed / post workout meal is normally pretty high in protein (60g or so) made up of whey, greek yoghurt, a protein bar, maybe some other stuff. Stuff like no fat greek yoghurt is also pretty satiating for the amount of calories it has. I don't go to bed hungry.

3. Almost any take away food. I was a McDonalds fiend, but chinese and indian foods were also big staples. Also, beer; I love craft beer especially a nice hoppy IPA but since I lost the weight I cut it right back to a couple a week, and over the past 6 months I've ultimately realised that body comp is so important to me I'm probably happier abstaining altogether. That said, I've substituted other foods and my taste buds have adjusted. I can make my own burgers and curries that fit my macros better and taste just as good, and drink sugar free soft drinks pretty regularly. It helps that I kinda took over cooking for the family - I know you have young kids like me so this might or might not be an option for you, but my wife has been pretty happy to go along with it.

[mouse]

I've been struggling with my weight for a while (adulthood?). I can nail down my food for a month or four, but then I fall off the wagon and go on an ice cream and fast food bender. Looking back I have trouble
1. late night (post workout) snacking
2. after School commute snacking
3. stress eating
4. falling off the wagon and giving up

Snacking was definitely a big part of why I was a fatty. LOTS of junk food. I do my best to abstain from snacking these days, it's easier because I keep pretty strict to a 4-hour eating schedule, and that helps control most random hunger throughout the day.

I am definitely still susceptible to stress eating. Yesterday my garage flooded, had to tear apart the whole time, missed half of my training... rage ate a big bowl of Reese's Puffs because I'm really just 8 years old... but for the most part I do ok...

I know there a lot of people here who have had success with weight loss, and I know this is covered all the time, but maybe these questions are different(?)

1.How did you stop the yo-yoing of the weight?
2.For those that workout late at night, how did you deal with being super hungry right before bed?
3.Did you have some kind of trigger food that you needed to completely abstain from?

I think I'm going to take a page from @alek s log and start tracking my food in my log for a bit. If anybody wants to stalk me there and heckle me for bad decision making, feel free.

1.) I can't say I've "yo-yo'd" in the traditional sense. I have "yo-yo'd" in that I was 315 pounds, then 7 months later I was 200 pounds, then I realized that I basically traded one eating disorder for another, and decided to choose life so I intentionally gained about 30-40 pounds over the last year. These days I tend to hover between 235-240... the harsh-reality answer is it takes discipline, and consistency. It's not the answer many want to hear.

2.) Can't really answer that one, I don't train late and other than that I may not be the norm in that I'm not super hungry post-training. Probably how I time my meals/training (I eat right after anyway, so maybe I am hungry, but I don't have time to notice).

3.) I don't think so... part of "bouncing back" was learning to allow myself some bad crap every now and then. I can't live life being 100% strict on chicken, rice, and spinach. I used to track religiously, but these last few months I stopped in favor of following a kind of 80/20 rule. Most of my diet stays the same (it's very reminiscent of the "vertical" diet) and then there is a somewhat small window that I manipulate change through. It allows me to predictably maintain/gain... haven't really tried cutting yet, but I may next year. Competitively this year it's not a good idea for me.

All this said I have a weakness for Snickers... I just try to sneak them in from time to time on training days and I seem to do ok...

I'm never gonna be that dude that is jacked with abzZz... being 315 did some pretty irreparable damage to my aesthetics lol, particularly around the midsection. I make the joke to the wife that I think I look pretty decent now from the chest up lol.

[cwd]

I don't go to bed hungry.

+1. My self-discipline goes to pot in the hour or two before going to bed.

I can handle being hungry because my breakfast and lunch were small. But a dinner that leaves me hungry tends to backfire.

[omaniphil]

I struggle with this too. I've bounced back and forth a few times between 265lbs and 215lbs over the last couple of years. Currently I'm pushing the edge of 265. The first time I lost a lot of weight, I did it through going ketogenic, but I value my marriage, so don't think I can do that again. The second time, I had hired Robert Santana, and between the hardcore tracking and sense of obligation due to the money paid, i went down 30 or so lbs over the course of 5-6 months.

I think this biggest thing for me is alcohol intake. I can pretty much completely follow my macros, even if I'm not recording each and every thing through dinner time, but then whenever I have anything to drink, I lose all self control, and will stuff my face with whatever is on hand. The calories from the booze don't help either. I'm fairly sure if I cut alcohol out, I'd be in a negative caloric state and lose some weight. Just need to commit to that.

[augeleven]

A lot of great advice here. Thanks!
I think going forward I need to plan my midnight snack, instead of denying it is going to happen and then act surprised when it does.

[omaniphil]

A lot of great advice here. Thanks!
I think going forward I need to plan my midnight snack, instead of denying it is going to happen and then act surprised when it does.

Good plan. Like Platypus said earlier, finding the right snacks is great. I like cucumbers for that. I eat the entire damn thing around 9-10pm, skin and all. The fiber and water there really helps give a sense of satiety even though its like what, 50 calories or something like that? Well, thats what happens on nights I don't fall off the wagon

[Mugaaz]

Speaking for myself around 98% of my bad food choices are more a lack of planning than a lack of will power. As long as I prep my food in advance I'm good. Bad decisions happen when I'min a situation where I'm hungry *now* without something already prepared. The other bad choices happen when I let myself get hungry and then get put in tempting situations. I started preparing vast quantities of food and then freeze it so I can always have something ready and almost all my "cravings" went away. Only other tip I have is to make sure you have some variety. If I can choose between a bunch of *different* things I premade it is fine, if it is just vast quantities of the "same shit" I am much more likely to make a bad decision.

[BenM]

A lot of great advice here. Thanks!
I think going forward I need to plan my midnight snack, instead of denying it is going to happen and then act surprised when it does.

Yep. Planning is everything. It's why I take one of these to work with me. People may thing I'm mad, but I have all sorts of snack/drink options and I don't usually get caught short.

I wouldn't go so far as to have a cucumber for a midnight snack. But there are things like nuts (gotta watch portions though), protein bars, greek yoghurt, berries, and all sorts of things that are decent options instead of whatever you usually have. The question is, what DO you usually have, maybe there are easy substitutes that will satisfy the craving just as well? Heck, even a bowl of cereal isn't a bad option after a workout; it's quick and easy to prepare, and with low fat milk it's basically just carbs and protein which is what you need to recover (and is unlikely to be stored as fat).

[mouse]

Yep. Planning is everything. It's why I take one of these to work with me. People may thing I'm mad, but I have all sorts of snack/drink options and I don't usually get caught short.

That backpack has abzzz... I'm triggered.

I agree though, prepping is key for the majority of my nutrition. Where I don't prep I'm kind of the opposite of you though in that I am better about adherence if I limit my options. The only meal that usually changes for me throughout the week is dinner. Even on the weekends when I don't prep breakfast and lunch they are usually always the same or close variations of each other.

[SpinyNorman]

Heck, even a bowl of cereal isn't a bad option after a workout; it's quick and easy to prepare, and with low fat milk it's basically just carbs and protein which is what you need to recover (and is unlikely to be stored as fat).

My usual nighttime snack is a bowl of cereal. The quick and easy part wins it for me. I'm not trying to lose weight, so it's whole milk though.

[broseph]

For the late night issues, just make your last meal of the day post workout, and make it your biggest meal.

When I've dieted, being hungry all day is EZPZ, but sitting on the couch watching TV at night hungry= ice cream and doritos.

I've made my last meal of the day as much as double the calories of breakfast, lunch, or 2nd lunch.

Also, never snacks. Just 4 meals/day everyday whether I'm cutting or bulking. If you make "no snacks" a rule, then donuts at work aren't as much of a problem. Even if you set 1 aside to consume as part of your next meal, you can count the macros and make the whole meal satisfying instead of being hungry after donut snack AND being hungry after healthy lunch.

[BenM]

Heck, even a bowl of cereal isn't a bad option after a workout; it's quick and easy to prepare, and with low fat milk it's basically just carbs and protein which is what you need to recover (and is unlikely to be stored as fat).

My usual nighttime snack is a bowl of cereal. The quick and easy part wins it for me. I'm not trying to lose weight, so it's whole milk though.

Yeah for a fair while it was for me too. I've only dropped it at the moment cos carbs.

[ithryn]

yo-yoing

This is what I've got to stop effing around with. I have lost 5-20 lbs doing ketogenic before, and 10-30 lbs through half-ass macro tracking. By the time I get down to 200 lbs, I shift into a bulking mentality (at least that's what I'm telling myself at the time). I start making gains on my lifts, hit a peak where I'm think I'm happy and swole......



.....but in reality I'm just cruising right back up to being overweight.

Then something like Thanksgiving-Christmas hits and training goes down and dietary intake goes even further up so I'm thoroughly screwed. So I start a diet again.

No more cake a day mentality.

[DCM]

A lot of really solid advice here. I'm in exactly the same boat, having repeatedly got fat and shed the weight over the last decade or so. I really think the key things (as already mentioned by others) are:

1) Make small, sustainable changes to dietary habits. Track your intake if you have to - I most certainly do, and think I might always have to.
2) Have a game plan for when you stop cutting - this has always been where I've stumbled in the past. Reverse dieting is key, I think.
3) Ultimately, get away from the mentaility of having to temporarily "sacrifice" shit food / overeating and see this as a long-term change in your habits and lifestyle. You can still eat junk food, but in moderation - I now have a rule that I only drink booze and eat unhealthy food on social occasions, and never more than twice a week.

[juliadavid]

Are protein Bars and Protein candies the same thing?

[mettkeks]

Are protein Bars and Protein candies the same thing?

No.