I weigh daily, and I record and chart those weights on various computer graphs and tables which serves to clearly show my weight-loss or weight-gain trends. Sometimes this is difficult to continue because it involves facing a reality which I don't personally care for.

7 years ago, I reached my goal weight of 115 lbs. Since that time I've consistently and continuously worked very hard to maintain that weight. Over the past 5 years in maintenance, .... despite my best efforts of working toward weight-loss and/or maintenance every single day ... my weight has been very gradually creeping upward. At present my weight is bouncing around in the high 120s, frequently reaching  the very top of my "normal" BMI range.

Over this past 7 years of maintenance while recording all of my food and calories daily, I've varied the amounts I've eaten; I've varied the types of foods I've eaten: I've varied my eating times. In fact  I have experimented with just about every diet possible... both the "reasonable", and the  "unreasonable".  I've tried more exercise and less exercise and different exercise.  I've tried eating less calories and more calories, while keeping my overall calorie averages within reasonably acceptable ranges for my own personal BMR. 

During each of the past 5 years, my daily calorie average has been around 1050, which ... quite frankly ... is just about the lowest average that I can maintain.  Over long time periods, sometimes my weekly averages are around 1200, sometimes they are around 800.  My weight bounces around - usually within a 5 lb range - but the yearly trend has continued to creep upward.

I really hate seeing this. Sometimes I'd like to just give up watching the scale, but my lifetime of experience has taught me what happens with me when I choose to follow that tactic.  So ... I'm working to emotionally Accept what is happening with my body, while -- at the same time -- I continue to do my utmost to physically Change it, and redirect the scale downward.

Sometimes it feels like I am being drug along to a place against my will, while I'm resisting with all my might, struggling, and clutching and clawing to any object that will slow or stop that progress. It's hard, and it's not a good feeling. Again and again I've watched as others about me -- also involved in a similar struggle, -- let go and ride passively into weight-gain oblivion, or give up and embrace behaviors that cause rapid weight-gain, and I feel alone and abandoned.

Some of the people who read my articles indicate that they dislike seeing "negativity".  My response is simply that I write about the Reality that I see and that I know.  DietHobby is primarily to help ME, although I'm pleased to share my thoughts with anyone who finds them useful or interesting.

What will happen to me?  Will my weight continue to creep upward?  Will it settle here? Will it go back down?  I don't know. I'm fighting tooth and claw against obesity, and my plan is to continue doing so.  The reason Why I do want to be a "normal" weight isn't even important to me anymore.  This process is simply a lifetime behavior commitment that I am choosing to follow through with.  

Right now, Today, I'm working to feel grateful for being inside my "normal" BMI range .. even though it is at the very Top instead of in the Middle. I'm working to Appreciate what I HAVE, before it becomes what I HAD.

My own resistance involves far more struggling than shown in the video below.

We live in a world of Unrealistic Expectations.

Like I keep saying:

Being Fat is Hard
Losing Weight is Hard
Maintaining Weight is Hard
Choose your Hard.

Fat Is Officially Incurable (According to Science)
              By: David Wong

Let's get this straight: The number of people who go from fat to thin, and stay there, statistically rounds down to zero.

Every study says so. No study says otherwise. None.

Oh, you can lose a ton of weight. You'll gain it back.
Here's one study running the numbers.
Here's a much larger analysis of every long-term weight loss study they could find. 
They all find the exact same thing: You can lose and keep off some minor amount, 10 or 15 pounds, for the rest of your life -- it's hard, but it can be done. Rarer cases may keep off a little more. But no one goes from actually fat to actually thin and stays thin permanently.

And when I say "no one," I mean those cases are so obscenely rare that they don't even appear on the chart. They can't even find enough such people to include in the studies. It's like trying to study people who have survived falling out of planes. Being fat is effectively incurable, every study shows it, and no one will admit it.

So the guy or girl you see in the "Before" and "After" photos in weight loss commercials, who completely changed body type with diet and exercise? You know, like Jared from Subway, who lost 230 pounds? Either they're about to be fat again in a couple of years, or they're a medical freak occurrence, like the sick guy who was told he had six months to live but miraculously survives 20 years. That guy exists, we all know famous examples. But it's a rare, freak situation, living in defiance of all of the physical processes at work.

How rare? Well, this person did the math and as far as they could tell, two out of 1,000 Weight Watchers customers actually maintain large weight losses permanently. Two out of a thousand. That means if you are fat, you are 25 times more likely to survive getting shot in the head than to stop being fat.  

Meanwhile, here's an article where scientists marvel at the amazing success of Weight Watchers, because a study of their most successful customers showed they permanently lost 5 percent of their weight. Wow! You come in at 300 pounds, you stay at 285!   Next stop, thong store!
 
So please remember this the next time the subject comes up at the office or on some message board and you get bombarded by thin 20-year-olds insisting the obese need to just "cut out the junk food" or "take care of themselves" or "do some exercise." The body physically won't allow that for a formerly fat person.

"Well, just stop eating so much!" Sure, kid. To feel what it's like, try this:

Go, say, just 72 hours without eating anything. See how long it is until the starvation mechanism kicks in and the brain starts hammering you with food urges with such machine gun frequency that it is basically impossible to resist. That's what life is like for a formerly fat person all the time. Their starvation switch is permanently on. And they're not going 72 hours, they're trying to go the rest of their lives. It's like being an addict where the withdrawal symptoms last for decades. Here’s a breakdown of the science in plain English.

As that article explains, the person who is at 175 pounds after a huge weight loss now has a completely different physical makeup from the person who is naturally 175 -- exercise benefits them less, calories are more readily stored as fat, the impulse to eat occurs far, far more often. The formerly fat person can exercise ten times the willpower of the never-fat guy, and still wind up fat again. The impulses are simply more frequent, and stronger, and the physical consequences of giving in are more severe. The people who successfully do it are the ones who become psychologically obsessive about it, like that weird guy who built an Eiffel Tower out of toothpicks.

Statistically, the only option with any success rate is a horrible, horrible surgical procedure. I can find no data whatsoever that says otherwise. Keep all of this in mind the next time you see a Jenny Craig or Bowflex commercial.

            David Wong of www. cracked.com

We need to stop lying to ourselves and quit swallowing all of the media headlines.
Diets aren’t bad, and we aren’t starving or ruining our metabolisms.
Chances are you won’t lose weight fast.
Stop wasting time looking for a silver bullet.
It’s not there.

   The word “diet” means the stuff one eats.
Everyone is on some sort of diet.

Diets, meaning calorie restriction, DO work.
If we restrict what we eat below what we need each day to run our bodies,
the scale will move. If not, hurry over to a research lab
and let them write you up in a medical journal,
because you’ve figured out how to create energy from nothing.

Adopting some TEMPORARY habits, losing weight,
and then picking up those previous habits again doesn’t work.
The weight always returns.
 
Live one way, lose weight. Live another way, gain weight. 
Go figure.
Diets work.
While you’re arguing with me about it, I’ll be watching my calories.

Three of
the most frequent
Diet MYTHS are:

First, the idea that we need to detoxify or cleanse our bodies;

Second, the idea that we need a plethora of dietary supplements to stay healthy; and

Third, the idea that eating specific foods or products will increase metabolism and make us lose weight.

Notice how often these three Myths are associated with the marketing of unfounded ... (and even potentially harmful) ... diet products.