Keeping it off is the big thing. If you can’t keep it off, it’s a terrible disappointment. When we make personal changes, they are not real—unless they last. Those are the changes that can help us have much better lives. You can learn how to keep the weight off. Here’s one way to understand how to do it. Think of the last time you lost a chunk of weight, and then gained it back. Think hard. What things did you do that helped you regain? What exactly did you do? If you can work to remember what happened, and what you did—even step by step—to accomplish that slip back into your old weight, it can mean everything to your next attempt at permanent weight loss.

Write down all the things you did that enhanced the possibility of weight regain. Address these issues. They probably were a mixture of outside influences and emotional, inside issues. Try not to gloss over anything that  seems relevant, big or small. Then you can see pretty much how and why such a very disappointing, discouraging thing happened. Doesn’t this sound like a good way to start figuring out how to avoid doing the same things again? First acknowledge what went wrong, and you’ll light the way for making things go right.