Originally Posted by
mileslong
I wonder if you have ever given any thought as to why you won't allow yourself to succeed? You obviously have the passion for cycling, the willpower to stay on track long enough to see progress, and the ability to recognize self defeating behavior: so why do you sabotage yourself? Is there a flaw in your belief system that makes you think you don't deserve to feel good about yourself and your body? I only ask because it is something I have struggled with for years.
Sorry, but this is a bit too Oprahesque for me. Why does he need to have any flaws in his belief system? How do we know he doesn't want to succeed? Just because something goes wrong doesn't mean that deep down inside we wanted it to go wrong. There are other factors and possibilities. For example, after losing weight our metabolism is now lower as we have less body to support. Our appetite hormones may have taken a beating, driving us to want to eat the amount we used to eat. It takes a effort to not eat too much. We have to exercise more than people who were never overweight to maintain the weight loss. Life intervenes and we might have events that stress us out, lowering our ability to resist temptation. We have to decide this, we have to decide that, and we run out of oomph to decide not to eat. Biology (coupled with ease of access) pushes us to eat and we end up eating just a bit too much. Suddenly we have 2, 10, 20 extra pounds. This doesn't mean that we sabotaged ourselves, it just might mean that maintaining weight loss is really hard work for some of us. The key seems to be catching the slips early.
What is important is that dcrowell has caught himself. I see no good reason to beat ourselves up for what clearly is a difficult task--maintaining weight loss. Instead, all we can do is get back on the wagon and realize that for many or most the battle never ends.