Confident Eaters

Why Weight Regain Happens (It’s Not Just Willpower)
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Georgie: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Confident Eaters Podcast, where you get proven methods to end overeating, emotional eating, and stressing about food. We are heading for harmony between your body, food and feelings. Hosted by me, Georgie Fear, and my team at Confident Eaters.

Christina: Today we're digging into something so many people have experienced firsthand: why it's so easy to regain weight after losing it. You follow the plan, you see the scale go down, your clothes fit better, and then somehow the weight comes creeping or crashing back.

Georgie: And the worst part? It often feels like a personal failure, like you messed up. But here's the truth: weight regain is not a sign of a person being weak, lazy, or lacking willpower. It's actually a biologically driven response. An excellent research review was recently published exploring why this happens, so we wanted to break it down on the show. We're talking about a '25 paper published in the Journal _Nutrients._ The title is The Interplay Between Psychological and Neurobiological, predictors of Weight Regain: a Narrative Review. That's a bit of a mouthful, but what we have here is a paper looking at the psychological and neurological reasons that keeping weight off is so difficult. And the science tells a very different story than the usual "just try harder" conclusions that we might come to on our own.

Christina: Let's start with the psychological side. Research shows that people who successfully maintain weight loss often have high levels of self-efficacy. is the belief that you have in your own ability to handle challenges and accomplish goals. It's not just optimism or hoping things will work out. It's the confidence that you can take the [00:02:00] steps needed to make them work out. For example, if you believe you can learn a new skill, stick to a plan, or cope with setbacks, you're more likely to actually follow through. Psychologist Albert Bandura, who coined the term, showed that self-efficacy influences the choices we make, the effort we put in, and how we bounce back after failures. People with higher self-efficacy tend to view obstacles as problems to solve rather than signs to quit, which makes it a powerful predictor of long-term success in everything from health habits to career growth.

Georgie: Psychologists have identified a few reliable ways to boost self-efficacy. The most powerful is mastery experiences, actually doing something and succeeding even in small steps. Every win sends the message to your brain, "I can do this!" Second, there's vicarious experience. Seeing someone that you relate to succeed at a goal makes you think "if they can, maybe I can too."

Third is verbal persuasion, encouragement from a trusted person who believes your ability and reminds you of your strengths. Like a coach!

Christina: Other psychological traits also influence whether a person regains weight or not. While self-efficacy helps people keep weight off, three other characteristics can make a person more likely to regain weight.

Those are impulsivity, perfectionism, and what's called dichotomous thinking. Impulsivity is the tendency to act on urges without much pause for consequences, like deciding to cut your own bangs at 2:00 AM or buying a kayak because it was on sale.

Even though you live in the desert, perfectionism is the belief that if it's not flawless, it's worthless, which might sound noble until you realize you've [00:04:00] spent three hours rewriting a thank you email or refuse to bake cookies because your icing technique isn't competition ready. And then there's dichotomous thinking, the mental habit of sorting the world into all or nothing categories. this mindset, one missed workout means your fitness is ruined forever, or a single typo makes you a complete disaster at life. While each of these traits can sometimes be useful in tiny doses, they can also trip us up in spectacular and occasionally hilarious ways.

Georgie: When impulsivity, perfectionism, and dichotomous thinking team up, it's like the Avengers of self-sabotage. Impulsivity says, "let's eat the whole cake now! Future US will figure it out." Perfectionism chimes in with, "well, the day's already ruined, so we might as well ruin it," and dichotomous thinking, nods solemnly, "yes, this is officially the worst day ever. Might as well start over Monday." Together, they can derail progress on any goal from healthy eating to saving money by pushing you into cycles of overdoing overcorrecting and overdramatizing. And they often have a hand in your pants getting tighter. It's common and it makes sense because when we frame food choices as either good or bad, we set ourselves up to feel like failure the moment we step outside the good list. That guilt can trigger binge behavior and spiral into a cycle of overeating and self-criticism.

Christina: Another huge piece of the puzzle in weight regain is emotional regulation. A lot of us turn to food as a way to cope with boredom, sadness, stress, or even just uncomfortable stillness. The review found something interesting and pretty relatable. Women are more likely to ruminate, which is just a fancy way of saying we replay negative thoughts on a loop. You know, like lying in bed at night, reliving that awkward thing you said three years [00:06:00] ago. Men on the other hand, are more likely to suppress, slamming the emotional doors shut and shoving those feelings into storage, hoping they'll just vanish. But here's the problem, whether you're stuck on mental repeat or playing emotional, hide and seek, those feelings don't actually disappear. Rumination and suppression are maladaptive ways of regulating emotion. These habits make a person more likely to turn to food and regain weight they lost.

Georgie: And your brain remembers those patterns. If you've learned that a pint of ice cream helps dull your anxiety even temporarily, your brain will keep nudging you in that direction. It's not about willpower. It's about neural pathways that are trying to help keep you safe. The takeaway is your brain has developed associations between food and comfort and those associations are sticky. I want to read one sentence directly from the review: "Traits such as self-control, food related self-awareness, motivation, openness to dietary change, and effective stress management strategies are consistently associated with better outcomes."

That's a pretty short but excellent list for consideration. I'll read those characteristics one at a time, and for each one, please take a second to think about yourself and if you're already strong or if you need to develop each trait and ask yourself if you're willing to work on it. First, self-control. You can practice and train self-control, by the way. Would it help you to build more in this area? Second food related self-awareness. Are there any ways you could bring more awareness to your food habits and intake? Motivation. Do you lose sight of your motivation easily? Do you have good reasons for wanting to maintain your weight loss? And do you remind yourself of those reasons? [00:08:00] Openness to dietary changes? Be honest. How open are you to eating differently or trying new things in the food department? Effective stress management strategies. Do you regularly practice them? Not just know them, but practice them?

Christina: Now let's talk more about the brain, specifically how it responds to food cues, especially high calorie, hyper palatable foods. The review highlighted that people who've lost weight or have a history of obesity show more activity in areas tied to reward, motivation and impulsivity when they see tempting foods.

Georgie: We are talking about the amygdala, orbito frontal cortex and insula. Brain regions that are also active in people that have substance use disorders. These parts of the brain essentially say, "Hey, that cookie isn't just food. It's pleasure, relief, and dopamine."

Christina: So when you're in the office kitchen staring at leftover birthday cake, your brain is lighting up like a Christmas tree, and it's not because something is wrong with you. It's because if you've lost weight or have a history of a higher body weight, your neural wiring is more sensitive than average at detecting rewards in food form.

Georgie: Exactly. Some brains are just more sensitive to those cues than others. It's not fair, but we can't deny that it is real.

Christina: Now let's talk about how biology plays a role in weight regain. As many people know, your metabolism fights back after weight loss. When you lose weight, your body burns fewer calories just to maintain basic functions. Your hunger hormone, ghrelin increases, and your satiety hormone, leptin drops. We talked about that in part one and three of the "Help! I messed up my hormones" series, so check that out if you wanna hear more about it.

Georgie: And that hormonal shift, it doesn't reset right away. It can persist for months or even years. So even after you've finished your [00:10:00] diet, your biology is quietly nudging you to eat more and move less.

Christina: Your body thinks it's protecting you from famine. It's not trying to sabotage your goals. It's trying to keep you alive. Evolution, unfortunately didn't account for Uber Eats and Costco.

Georgie: The review paper also pointed out that chronic dieting can activate the amygdala. Yep, that same emotional brain region making restriction feel extra mentally stressful. If you've ever felt like dieting puts you on edge or shortens your fuse, this is probably why. I know with many of my clients, even talking about a diet or thinking or planning a diet to start in the future is enough to make their heart rate raise and start to feel uneasy.

Christina: Hmm. So wherever you are now, either trying to get weight loss started, partway to goal, or focused on maintenance and not regaining, here's something to remember. Flexibility wins. of the most helpful findings in the review was this: people who practice flexible restraint, meaning they allow themselves treats and adjust their eating based on what's happening in real life, tend to have significantly better long-term outcomes than people who try to follow strict rigid food rules. We've talked about this before on the show because it's so well supported by research, and in many ways it's the opposite of how most people have been taught to approach weight loss. The traditional model says, stick to the plan no matter what, and if you go off, you failed. But in reality, success comes from being able to bend without breaking. And we definitely see that with our clients.

Georgie: A hundred percent. And I still see things on the web, like Facebook or Instagram, that are designed to be inspirational, that are essentially selling rigid dieting. Like people are still saying, no [00:12:00] flour, no sugar, whole 30, you know, you gotta get up at 5:00 AM and just hit the gym harder. You'll be, be proud of yourself when you're skinny.

And it's like, I just smack my forehead and be like, no, no, no, no, no. Or smack their foreheads more appropriately. No, no, no, no, no. Don't tell people to do that. Being flexible means you can go out for pizza without spiraling. A flexible eater can enjoy dessert at a birthday party and not feel like they blew it, and if they overeat or they miss a workout or a week of workouts, they just get back to what they were doing the next day.

No shame. No, I've gotta start over.

Christina: If you find yourself highly upset by a dietary indiscretion or kicking yourself for particularly sedentary behavior, try zooming out. Trust that what you do most of the time matters more than any single meal or moment. Aim to be adaptable and do what you can rather than quitting once. You can't be perfect. flexibility doesn't make you a lesser or second rate fit person. It means you're building a lifestyle that's actually sustainable in the real world with all of its stressors, surprises, and celebrations.

Georgie: Another fascinating finding is that in brain scans, people who successfully maintain weight loss show stronger activation in the prefrontal cortex. That's the part of the brain responsible for long-term planning, impulse control, and emotion regulation. Which I notice are three things we talk about a lot, both on the show and with our clients.

We plan, we talk about how to control impulses, and we talk a lot about regulating emotions. This area of your brave, your brain help think ahead, weigh consequences, and pause before reacting. So it's not just about willpower in the moment, it's about having a brain trained to make thoughtful decisions, even when [00:14:00] temptations or stress are high.

So this might leave you wondering, well, how's my prefrontal cortex doing? Is it strongly activated, predicting better success with weight loss maintenance? Or is it barely flickering like a dollar store flashlight with moribund batteries?

Christina: We can't scan your brain to answer this question, but you probably can do some accurate self-assessment. Do you feel like you're good at long-term planning, controlling your impulses and regulating your emotions? You probably are. Do you sense that you're a bit weaker in these skills? You probably know. A lot of people wonder, are you just born impulsive? Or can you actually change it? The truth is some of us do get a genetic head start. Kids vary in their temperament right from the beginning. Some are naturally cautious and deliberate while others are more jump First, think later. That's biology at work. But here is the MythBuster. Impulse control is not fixed, and this really matters for weight regain. People often think, "I'm just impulsive. I'll never keep weight off." But the truth is impulsivity doesn't cause weight regain by itself. It only makes it easier to fall into old patterns when life gets stressful or tempting. The real risk is when an impulsive moment like grabbing fast food or eating late at night, collides withides with perfectionism or all or nothing thinking. That's when a small slip snowballs into a larger spiral of overeating, which drives weight regain over time. The hopeful piece is that impulse control can be trained like a muscle. Every time you practice pausing, planning ahead, or creating a supportive environment, you're stacking the deck in your favor. You don't need to be born with iron willpower to keep the progress you've made. You just need to keep building those skills one small rep [00:16:00] at a time.

Georgie: In other words, successfully keeping weight off is not about whether you eat low carb or low fat or high protein, or whether you take spin class run, or do CrossFit. It's about strengthening the mental pathways that support balanced, calm choices over time, especially in situations where emotional or impulsive eating would have taken over in the past.

Christina: Here are a couple more resources that can prevent weight regain. One of the top tools mentioned was cognitive behavioral therapy, something we use loads of techniques from in our coaching. Cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT is a structured evidence-based approach that helps people change unhelpful thought patterns and behaviors. It works by identifying distorted or automatic thoughts like "Ugh, I messed up, so I might as well give up." And replacing them with more balanced, realistic ones. CBT also focuses on developing practical skills like emotion regulation, problem solving, and habit building. Over time, this helps reduce emotional distress and create more flexible, supportive responses to life's challenges.

Georgie: Medications can help too. Think of GLP one receptor agonists like Ozempic or wegovy. They've also been discussed as pertains to weight regain. These drugs can reduce appetite and dampen the brain’s reward response to food, which helps many people maintain weight loss longer. Emerging evidence is showing that people need to stay on these drugs to maintain weight loss.

So if you took a GLP receptor agonist, stopped it and then started to regain weight, the most logical and effective step might be resuming the medication.

Christina: Starting therapy or medication might feel like big interventions, small daily choices can help too. Here are some realistic strategies that we put together that help calm the stress centers of the brain, [00:18:00] reduce food reactivity, and support long-term change. Every one of these will increase the chances that you never see lost pounds reappear.

Georgie: Tip one, regulate your nervous system. If your amygdala, the emotional fear center is always activated, everything feels harder. So build in daily downshifts. Just five to 10 minutes of deep breathing, walking, or yoga can help your brain feel safer and more balanced. Even pausing for 30 seconds of slow breathing before meals can help put your body into rest and digest mode. I like to take deep breaths and pet my dog if I even feel like I'm starting to get worked up.

Christina: Tip number two, practice flexible restraint. Rigid food rules, increase stress, and make it hard to stick with your plan. Instead, allow yourself treats, adapt to life's messiness, and focus on consistency over perfection. Think, how close was I to the I want to be today? Not, did I do it perfectly? When I go out to eat, I don't obsess over having a perfectly balanced plate. I'll look for something with protein and veggies in it, but otherwise, my focus will be on enjoying the company, environment, and listening to my body so that I can stop eating when I feel satisfied.

Georgie: Tip three, strengthen your prefrontal cortex. This part of the brain helps with impulse control and long-term thinking. Sleep at least seven hours. Journal through emotional trigger, and try inserting a pause before you leap into action on something like, I'll check back with this craving in 10 minutes.

I practice this with online shopping by putting items that I'm interested in, into the cart, but not checking out until the following day. Much of the time I realized I don't actually need that thing.

Christina: Tip number four, [00:20:00] desensitize trigger foods and treats. Instead of banning treat foods, bring them into your meals with intention. Sit down, down and savor them. This rewires your brain so that they feel less compulsive and more neutral over time. When my clients tell me there's a certain food that they normally don't eat unless they are being bad or are off track, I almost always suggest that we start incorporating that food into normal meals as soon as we can, and paying attention to the experience of eating them.

Georgie: Tip five, move in ways you enjoy. Exercise, helps maintain weight loss and regulate mood, but it doesn't have to be intense. Walking, dancing, strength training, anything that makes you feel good counts. Yes, exercise helps increase energy expenditure, but what I think is more important is that it helps your brain function better.

The psychological abilities I listed earlier, like self-control, self-efficacy, motivation, and stress management. Yep. Exercise helps improve all of them.

Christina: Tip number six, build new emotional coping tools. Food works for short-term comfort because your brain learned that connection, but you can teach it new options. Try texting a friend, taking a shower, journaling, or using a weighted blanket instead of automatically turning to food. If you have just started listening to our show, keep going.

You'll find we talk extensively about this topic. If you search for the emotion regulation episodes titled When Food Isn't the Fix, you'll uncover a Treasure trove of new Skills to try instead of snacking, ruminating, or suppressing. These skills, help quiet the mental noise, soothe the emotional triggers, and gradually reshape your brain's [00:22:00] relationship with food.

Georgie: And if you're looking for compassionate structured support that honors both your biology and your real life, our programs might be a great fit. Both Christina and I are available to coach you one-on-one at your convenience and anywhere in the world you happen to live. We don't do shame restriction or extremes.

We teach you evidence-based eating and psychological skills to help you reach and stay a healthy weight. Plus, you'll form a more relaxed relationship with food, not a more rigid or stressful one.

Christina: You won't achieve permanent weight loss by fighting your body. You'll succeed by teaching it new ways to feel safe and supported, and that takes time, but it's so worth it. Thanks being with us here today, we hope that this episode helped you feel a little more informed and a lot less fearful or powerless about the possibility of weight regain.

Georgie: Don't forget to leave us a rating or review. If you wanna help send some love in our direction. We appreciate them all. Until next time, take care of yourself.