The Things Nobody Tells You About Regaining Weight
When I lost around 10 stone, I genuinely thought I had reached the happy ending.
That sounds a bit dramatic, but if you’ve ever lost a significant amount of weight, you’ll probably understand what I mean. For years, I’d worked towards that goal. I’d changed my eating habits, transformed my lifestyle and watched the number on the scales steadily fall. I went from a size 30 to a size 6-8, started running and felt healthier than I had in years.
People often ask what it felt like to lose that much weight. The honest answer is amazing. What people don’t ask is what it feels like if it comes back. Regaining weight isn’t talked about nearly enough, which is why I wanted to share my story with you.
The Weight Didn’t Come Back Overnight
If you’ve never experienced regaining weight, you might imagine it happens because someone suddenly gives up. That’s certainly how I used to think about it. The reality, at least for me, was nothing like that.
There wasn’t a day when I woke up and decided healthy eating wasn’t important anymore. There wasn’t a moment when I threw all my good habits out of the window and started eating takeaways every night.
Life just happened. There were stressful times, busy times and difficult times. There were celebrations, holidays and days when convenience won over good intentions. None of those things seemed particularly significant at the time.
That’s the sneaky thing about weight regain. It rarely arrives with a fanfare. Instead, it quietly creeps into your life while you’re busy dealing with everything else.
At first, it was little things. A pair of jeans that felt a bit tighter. A top that didn’t sit quite right. Looking at a photo and wondering whether it was just an unflattering angle. I think deep down I knew what was happening long before I was prepared to admit it.
The Hardest Part Wasn’t The Weight
What surprised me most was that the weight itself wasn’t actually the hardest part. The hardest part was what it did to my head.
After losing so much weight, my weight loss journey had become part of who I was. I’d written about it for years. I’d shared photos, milestones, struggles and successes. Thousands of people had followed along.
For a long time, I was “Jen who lost 10 stone.” When the weight started creeping back on, I felt like I was letting people down. I know that sounds ridiculous now. Nobody was sitting there judging me as harshly as I was judging myself. But that’s how it felt.
Every pound seemed to carry far more emotional weight than it should have done. I remember standing in front of my wardrobe one morning, trying on clothes that used to fit comfortably and feeling completely defeated. Not because I desperately wanted to be a certain dress size, but because I felt as though I was undoing years of hard work.
Looking back now, I can see that I was carrying a huge amount of shame. At the time, I just thought I was disappointed in myself.
Losing Weight Didn’t Fix My Relationship With Food
This is probably the biggest lesson I’ve learned from the whole experience. For years, I thought my weight was the problem. I thought that if I could just get smaller, everything else would fall into place. The reality turned out to be much more complicated.
Even when I was at my target weight, food still occupied a huge amount of space in my head. I worried about what I was eating. I felt guilty if I ate foods I considered “bad”. I let the scales influence my mood far more than they should have done.
The weight had changed. My mindset hadn’t. I don’t think I fully understood that until much later. It’s one of the reasons my experience with Wegovy and learning about food noise had such a big impact on me. For the first time, I started to realise that my struggle had never simply been about food.
It was about everything that sat behind it.
- Stress.
- Comfort.
- Habit.
- Emotions.
- Years of dieting.
- Years of believing that being thinner would somehow fix everything.
I Wish I’d Been Kinder To Myself When Regaining Weight
If I could go back and talk to the version of me who was watching the scales creep up, I think the first thing I’d say is this:
Be kinder to yourself.
I spent far too long seeing weight regain as a personal failure. I told myself I should know better. I told myself I should be able to sort it out. I told myself I’d failed.
The truth is that weight regain is incredibly common.
In fact, many people regain some or all of the weight they lost. We just don’t talk about it very often because success stories are easier to share than struggles.
That’s one of the reasons I wanted to write this article.
Because if you’re reading this and you’ve regained weight, I want you to know you’re not the only one. And you’re certainly not a failure.
What I Think About Weight Loss and Regaining Weight Now
These days, my view of weight loss is very different.
Do I still want to lose weight? Absolutely.
Do I still want to improve my health? Of course.
But I’m no longer chasing perfection. I’m no longer willing to let one number determine whether I’ve had a good day. And I’m no longer interested in approaches that make me miserable in the pursuit of a smaller body.
What I want now is something sustainable. Something that works on ordinary days, not just perfect days. Because life isn’t lived on the weeks when everything goes to plan. Life is lived in the messy middle.
And if there’s one thing regaining weight has taught me, it’s that learning how to navigate that messy middle is probably more important than any target weight I ever reached.
My Overall Thoughts
For a long time, I felt ashamed of regaining weight. Now, I see it differently. Losing 10 stone taught me a lot about determination and resilience. Regaining some of it taught me about compassion, balance and being honest with myself.
Would I rather not have regained weight? Of course.
But pretending it never happened wouldn’t help me or anyone else.
Sometimes the stories that help people the most aren’t the ones where everything goes perfectly. Sometimes they’re the ones where things don’t go to plan, and you keep going anyway.
Has my story and experiences of regaining weight helped you see that it is ok and there is no need to feel guilt? Do you think I made the right decision to share my experiences? Let me know in the comments below.
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