Gaining weight

Ok I started to try to go back to losing weight a little over a month ago.  I was and am determined to lose the weight I have left.  I was doing really good I had lost 17 lbs in a little over a month.  I understand that there are some times when you won't lose any but my problem is for some reason I have started gaining weight back.  I have gained 4 lbs in the last 3 days.  I exercise, watch what I eat and drink plenty of water.  I can't figure out why I might be gaining weight. Any suggestions?

I got fat eating good healthy foods and doing lots of quick weight loss diets.  The weight always came back with a few extra pounds. If I lost seventeen pounds in a month, I would gain back ten the next month.  Two pounds a month is all that my body can sustain without regain.  When I want to lose weight, I accept that it will take time and I count calories and am happy with losing a half pound a week, elated with one pound a week, and rarely see two pounds a week.

I exercise, drink a lot of water, and count calories.  I eliminate 500 calories a day from my eating to lose one pound a week.  I eat five small meals a day of between 200 and 300 calories each.  I eat high protein and no white flour, sugar, potatoes, rice, or pastas. 

I eat some high fiber bread and high protein and fiber products like Kodiak Power Cakes. 

I track calories in My Fitness Pal. 

Before surgery, I was always on diets and losing seven or eight pounds in a week was easy.  Now I have accepted that this is a lifetime project, not a quick diet.  I do weigh myself every morning.  I want no surprises from the scale. 

If you really want to reach your goal and stay there, then give up the dieting and learn the right amount of calories for you to lose and maintain.  If It Fits Your Macros is the perfect place to determine your personal needs.  You can use the site for free, start with the calculators.

 

Hey White Dove - I'm only almost 10 months out, but I do the same thing that you do, and with your post, I guess this will be my lifestyle if I want to keep my weight off. I only weigh 1/week because I obsess with the NUMBER, and it freaks me out when I see normal variation from day to day.
Anyway, thanks for posting what you do as a long term success story - makes me believe that I can do this too, but I must stick to my plan and be accountable for every bite, every day.

You might consider using TrendWeight to track your weight. I get super obsessed with numbers, and it keeps me sane. 

That is what I do. I wasn't doing any quick weight loss diets.  I use My Fitness Pal and count my calories using what they say I should have and I exercise. I was really suprised when I lost 17 lbs so fast.  I was expecting to lose maybe a lb or two a week and realizing that there will be times when I wouldn't lose anything at all but I was really surprised when I gained 4 lbs.  I eat between 1200 to 1300 calories a day. I don't eat fried food or sugar. 

There are a lot of things that go into the WL equation.

 

Calories in vs Calories out is what we talk about, but your body is largely comprised of water, so small changes in water retention can be huge differences.

Someone posted an article on the board about stalls and it is possible if you had re-committed to WL, that yo shed the glycogen stores and the associated water in the first month, and are now replenishing it.

Or you could have had something salty, or any of a number of things that might make you retain water.