Losing Weight Only to Gain It Back Again

If you read my weight loss update post in October, you would know that I was down to 143 lbs. This was an achievement for me because it was 11 lbs less than my weight during the recent summer. 

What you probably don’t know is that near the end of November, I had actually gained back around 5-6 lbs. 

As you can probably imagine, I was extremely upset and embarrassed about this because it felt like I had undone a few months’ worth of work. And the thing is, that is exactly what I had ended up doing. 

Losing weight is not a joke; it takes months to lose weight but only days or weeks to gain it all back. So how on earth did I manage to “let myself go”?

One word: stress.

I don’t mean that because I was stressed, I just randomly gained weight. It’s more like because I was so stressed, I had started to let go of my healthier habits.

In other words, I frequently got takeouts instead of cooking, failed to get enough sleep for many nights, and had neither energy nor willpower to go to the gym.

The end of October until the whole month of November was a haphazard time for me because I struggled to deal with the logistics of finding internships and then accepting offers.

Being an international student means there is a bit more hassle for me when it comes to doing some things. Everything is fine now (and more on this later) but it was quite frankly, just a very frantic point in my life.

It’s important to learn how to accept consequences.

When I saw that my scale read “149” that one night, I was incredibly distraught. 

In retrospect, it’s pretty amusing to me how despite knowing exactly why something had happened, I still behaved as though I had witnessed a surprising outcome.

I don’t eat healthy + I don’t go to the gym = I gain some weight. Doesn’t that make perfect sense?

In my opinion, it would be much more acceptable to be disappointed if I had unquestionably pristine habits yet the numbers on the scale still went up. 

I think that an essential part of being able to have a better attitude about life, in general, is to be able to see things a little more logically.

Having thicker skin means you focus more on what can be done and understanding how things went astray instead of excessively wallowing in your feelings. Clearly, this is currently not a strength of mine but I am willing to work towards it.

Just keep moving forward.

Losing weight is a process, and it usually isn’t an easy one. 

It sounds utterly cliché but there isn’t much to be done except to “start over” and give my best effort once more. It sure beats giving up or wasting my time being upset over my “failure”.

I’m happy to say that jumping back into my healthier habits has helped me shed most of the weight again and I am now down to 144 lbs.

If I had at least kept exercising and sleeping at a reasonable hour despite the takeouts, I could have maybe maintained my weight and improved my mood and how I handled the pressure.

But in a way, I am grateful that that period of “suffering” happened despite my initial anguish. Because of it, I’ve reached a better understanding of how and why I should deal with stress.

The much busier Spring semester will surely test me once again; but unlike in the Fall, I am coming in a little more prepared.

Photos by Ange Y.