Why is Weight Loss So Hard to Maintain?

I Feel Like I'm Back at the Beginning Again! 

My experience with low carb dieting began in the 70s when I ran into Dr. Atkins’ original diet book at the library. 

At the time, it made a lot of sense.

I could relate to everything he shared, and when I tested it, the plan worked better than anything I’d tried up to that date.

I was 19, weighed in at a hefty 140 pounds on a 5-foot frame. With virtually no metabolic resistance, that one golden shot earned me maintenance within only 6 short weeks.

When I first wrote this article in 2011, I realized that this was exactly where I was sitting again that day. I was back to where I started in 1975. Despite finding out how to deal with my health issues, I was still standing at the same starting line.

Yes, I managed to shed a whopping 80 pounds in 2007 and  another 30 pounds in 2008 – but that was above where I first began my low-carb journey. I had regained a good 10 pounds of that last 30, so what gives? 

WHY is weight loss so hard to maintain?

Atkins 72: What was the Original Atkins Diet Like?

I can tell you what happened in 1975. 

With no internet help available, I wasn’t creative enough to figure out how to make the original Atkins diet permanently work for me. Back then, low carb dieting consisted of:

• meat, poultry, fish, or eggs
• two small loosely-packed 1 cup salads with oil-and-vinegar dressing
• 4 ounces of hard cheese
• the juice of 1 lemon or lime
• 4 teaspoons of heavy cream
• 2 servings of D-Zerta gelatin

That was Atkins Induction, except that you could also use butter or mayo on your meat. 

If you wanted whipped cream on your jello, you had to drink your coffee black. There was no:

• sausage
• hot dogs
• lunch meat
• cream cheese
• cooked vegetables
• or sour cream

The taste of artificial sweeteners sucked. And while Induction lasted only a single week, the 5- to 8-carb additions were equally limited.

Low Carb Blogs, Diet Forums, E-Groups, and Other Help

I honestly can’t use boredom and a lack of imagination as an excuse today. 

Today, you don’t have to be creative to turn your low carb way of eating into a lifestyle. There are literally hundreds of creative people out there willing to help you stick to your diet. 

Like the low carb blog I discovered yesterday.

With a title like Kicking Carbs to the Curb, I couldn’t help but check it out.

After briefing through the current posts, where I found a large number of enticing low-carb recipes and saw that she also sells an ebook on low-carb salads for an extremely affordable price of 99 cents, I headed for the start of her blog where I generally can find the author’s weight-loss story. 

What I found rather shocked me.

I’ve read many weight-loss blogs over the years and listened to many stories, but this was the first time I ran into a history that sounded pretty much like my own. 

Except for the mono and PCOS, you’d think that the path that led the author to choose a low-carb diet was mine.

Wow.

[After looking over the symptoms and issues associated with PCOS, I think I probably have that, too. The doctor wasn't thinking about PCOS. I'm guessing because of my age. She thought I might have uterine cancer, which luckily I didn't. She just said the cysts on my ovaries meant I was still ovulating.]

Asthma, heavy prednisone with the resulting adrenal fatigue, and finally finding weight-loss success with a PSMF diet. 

Not exactly like me, of course, since it’s the celiac disease and resulting fat malabsorption that made me turn from Atkins to a protein sparing modified fast – but still . . .

Facing Why I Crave Chocolate Chip Cookies

What is it about gluten-free cookies that drives me to start throwing away the pounds I’ve lost? 

Why am I so willing to lose ground after easily maintaining for weeks at a time? 

I can’t blame it on the wheat opioids this time around. Nor the lack of diet help. The only excuse left is myself; but is that about willpower and carbohydrate addiction, or something else?

I used to think so, but I’ve had to face those yummy cookies head-on and answer WHY they are so important to me, especially when I started talking about chucking the whole idea of weight loss and no longer wanting to strive to maintain what I’ve accomplished.

I initially chose a low-carb way of eating because it made sense to me, and because I was curious to see if a different approach to counting calories held any truth. 

Was Dr. Atkins right? 

Was it all about the carbs? 

Like any diet book penned for the masses, the answer is yes-and-no. Each of us must tweak the basic principles of any diet to fit the confines of our own health problems. 

But I’d already done that.

As the feature writer for the Autism section at Suite 101, I wrote a series of articles on Sensory Processing Disorder, so that's why all of this has been on my mind lately. 

Chocolate chip cookies snugly fit into the sense of taste. 

That sensory system’s defects can range from hypersensitivity to hyposensitivity, or anywhere in between. However, I wasn’t experiencing an aversion to foods. 

Like so many other low carbers, I tend to experience the opposite.

While allergies, sensitivities, opioid addiction to wheat and dairy, and all of that still holds true for some people, I have come to realize that I eat homemade cookies to excess for the pleasure that the sense of taste gives me.

This is a hyposensitive taste defect. 

Not addiction. 

Similar to when I completely lost my sense of taste for salt and sweetness several years ago. At that time, I kept adding more, and more, and more salt and sugar trying to get what I couldn’t taste.

Where Do I Go From Here?

My size 12 jeans are tight, tight, tight. I had to literally stuff myself into them on the day I wrote this post. 

My maintenance phase came to an end that day, but what about those darn cookies? 


The Rapid Fat Loss Plan I followed is a carb-and-calorie-cycling plan, which does allow free meals and refeeds, depending on how much body fat you have to lose. 

However, that’s side-stepping the real problem.

Pondering the issue of taste, I’ve come to realize over the last few years that I’ve never taken the time to find highly-flavored low-carb foods and recipes I’d actually want to keep eating on maintenance. 

I’ve always made diet food choices to get me by until I went on a maintenance break and chucked all that bland, boring stuff – because I was now off my diet.

I'm beginning to understand that to be successful at making lower carb eating a lifestyle, I've GOT to find some low-carb food choices that I love enough to make a part of my life forever.

So that's what I'll be seeking this time around.