Fall Weight Gain? Here's Your Troubleshooting Guide

**Jim Hill:** Welcome to Weight Loss And, where we delve into the world of weight loss. I'm Jim Hill.

**Holly Wyatt:** And I'm Holly Wyatt. We're both dedicated to helping you lose weight, keep it off, and live your best life while you're doing it.

**Jim Hill:** Indeed, we now realize successful weight loss combines the science and art of medicine, knowing what to do and why you will do it.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yes, the “And” allows us to talk about all the other stuff that makes your journey so much bigger, better, and exciting.

**Jim Hill:** Ready for the “And” factor?

**Holly Wyatt:** Let's dive in.

**Jim Hill:** Here we go. Today, we're diving into a topic that's on a lot of people's minds at this time of year. What to do when you start gaining weight in the fall, especially as winter approaches. You've done well, but boom, you may see that weight creeping up.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah, exactly, Jim. Fall is a time when people start to see those extra pounds and they kind of sneak on you. Sometimes it's just a couple, but for other people, it can be five or 10 pounds can add up pretty quickly. So this episode is all about troubleshooting that early weight gain and figuring out how to stop it before it gets out of control.

**Jim Hill:** You know, Holly, a lot of people sort of look at January as a time to address their weight, right? I think if I hear correctly, that weight and weight loss is one of the top, if not the top, New Year's resolution. But why wait until then? What if you could deal with it before then? Imagine starting 25 without having to undo all the fall and holiday weight gain. Wouldn't it be great to start a new year on solid ground instead of making a resolution to catch up?

**Holly Wyatt:** That's the goal. So today we're going to share some practical strategies so you don't have to find yourself backtracking when the new year rolls around. You can think of this episode as your troubleshooting guide, Jim. Let's just call it your troubleshooting guide.

**Jim Hill:** Let's call it your troubleshooting guide. It's like when you buy the appliance or something comes with a little troubleshooting. Something always goes wrong. So you have to go in and go through troubleshooting. Let's approach your weight the same way. If something's going wrong, let's give you some tips on things that might be causing it to go wrong.

**Holly Wyatt:** I like that. I like that. So let's start with the big question. Why do so many people gain weight in the fall? What about the fall that makes it a common weight gain time for people?

**Jim Hill:** Well, Holly, you know how I'm going to answer that as an energy balance researcher.

**Holly Wyatt:** I set you up, Jem. I set you up.

**Jim Hill:** It's not the fall, per se. If you're gaining weight, you're in positive energy balance. There's no magic here. If you're gaining weight, it means that the calories you're consuming through food are greater than the calories you're burning through your metabolism and physical activity. So you have to say, look, you almost approach it as an engineer. Here's the system. We know now the system is in a positive energy balance. Now let's go in and figure out why.

**Holly Wyatt:** Right. So we know the big picture, positive energy balance. But then what is it about the fall that makes more people likely to be in a positive energy balance?

**Jim Hill:** Well, probably it’s all the snacks you're eating during the football games, maybe. I don't know. But again, you're either eating more than you need or not exercising enough. And a lot of time the weather sometimes is such that you can't get outside. So you have to look at, well, maybe you're not taking that walk after dinner anymore. But maybe it is the food. You go to that you're watching the football game and you're snacking.

You go to some parties and you're snacking. A lot of these things could add up. It may not be one little thing. And so what you have to do is be a little bit of a detective in figuring out what has changed on your eating or exercise that may be leading to this positive energy balance.

**Holly Wyatt:** I know for me, the days getting shorter, that really impacts me. With less sunlight, I just don't want to move as much. I just don't want to get out there. And I think also as the weather gets colder, the days get shorter. We tend to want to kind of hibernate and maybe just don't have that same drive to move as much. And then I agree that parties, the football games, this holiday season come in.

**Jim Hill:** So maybe you don't think you're eating more, but you might be eating more of those foods that are a little bit higher in calorie content. So overall, you don't think you're eating that much more food, but you might be getting that many more calories because we've talked before about energy-dense foods. Some of the snack foods are high in energy density, whereas maybe before you're eating a diet that's a little less high in energy density.

**Holly Wyatt:** And that could be really sneaky because that means you're eating the same volume of food, the same amount of food, but it's just more calories in that same amount. And so you don't even realize it. I think that's something that happens pretty frequently in the fall. And you couple that with probably a little bit less lifestyle activity, maybe a little bit less planned activity. And wow, I think you definitely have that likelihood or you can easily get or more easily get into a positive energy balance. And the pounds can really sneak up.

**Jim Hill:** Yeah. And Holly, I want to emphasize there's no magic going on here. If you're gaining weight, something has changed and you have to figure it out. So what today's episode is about is recognizing the early signs of weight gain.

That's important, the early signs and taking action before it becomes a bigger issue. So we put together a six-step troubleshooting guide to help you prevent weight gain this fall. Let's go through it.

**Holly Wyatt:** All right. So when we were putting this together, I was thinking through what do I do? What's the mental process I go through when I'm helping someone, when I'm counseling someone, and when they're gaining weight at this time of year? And there's a series of six steps I kind of go through in my mind. So I wrote them down and I think we can do this kind of do-it-yourself version of what, how can I kind of address that when I see someone gaining weight? So step one, and this is important and this is really going to hammer home why you need to be weighing yourself and recording it every day. Step one is to catch it early. Weigh yourself daily so you know if you're gaining weight early.

**Jim Hill:** Yeah. How are you going to know if you don't weigh yourself? You know how it goes back to the people we worked with in the national weight control registry and we asked them why they weighed themselves registry and it's like, well, duh, how am I going to know I'm gaining weight if I don't weigh myself? So again, we've talked about the scale and not giving the scale power, but it's critical to know early on if you're gaining weight rather than weight until, oh my gosh, I gained 30 pounds since I weighed less time. So it is an early warning system that's incredibly important.

**Holly Wyatt:** Right, because we're talking about preventing you from gaining more. After you've gained 10, 20, or 30 pounds, now we're talking about probably going back into weight loss.

**Jim Hill:** Now you need a New Year's resolution.

**Holly Wyatt:** Now, and it's a different process. What we're talking about today is that let's prevent you from having to go back into weight loss or lose a lot of weight. Right, let's do it early. And the only way you can do it early is to know it's happened early, to recognize it early. And that really where is having good data is critical to catch it early, to see those trends. The other reason why you want to have this data is, there's a natural up and down to weight. We don't weigh exactly the same thing every single day.

There's a natural kind of ebb and flow to it, right? And everybody's body is a little bit different. So if you're weighing every day, you know what that natural up and down is. You understand your normal range, what your normal fluctuation is. So that's really important too to realize, is this just normal fluctuation for me or have I really gained some weight?

**Jim Hill:** Yeah, and can you just kind of rely on your clothes?

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah, so I get this question all the time. I don't want to step on the scale. It makes me feel bad, even though I know it shouldn't.

There's a lot of emotional baggage tied with the scale and I get it. Can I just put on my clothes? And you can, but come on. I mean, I have clothes. This is, I'll just be honest.

I'll do my vulnerability question right up front. I have clothes in my closet that I get up certain days and I'm like, I'm not putting that on. I know it's going to be tight.

And my tendency is, when I don't want to face it, is to go get those pants on that are stretchy, put on the big sweater, so I think we can definitely hide early weight gain with the clothes we wear. I don't think they're as precise. That's why getting on the scale, there's no hiding that it's a very precise objective number. How tight a pair of pants is, that's a little bit subjective.

**Jim Hill:** And it's pretty easy to do this one. This is such an important step and all you need is a scale. This set, you don't require expensive stuff. It takes what? In seconds to get on the scale. I mean, this is such an important step and it's so easy to do.

**Holly Wyatt:** So hopefully everybody's already doing this. If not, I would say start it right now. So you can, you know what your weight is. You can see that natural fluctuation.

So you know when you have, we'll talk about this in a minute, a real weight gain or when it's just a natural fluctuation of your weight. So start doing this now in the fall if you're not doing it. All right, are we ready for step two?

**Jim Hill:** Let's go to step two.

**Holly Wyatt:** The next thing that I think about is someone comes to me and says, I'm gaining weight and they show me that they're gaining weight. They've been logging the weight is to determine if the weight gain is water or fat.

**Jim Hill:** Ah, how do you know that?

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah, well, it can be tricky because, on a scale, a pound of water will show up as a pound of weight gain. A pound of fat will show up as a pound of weight gain. So you can't really tell it on a scale.

But critically, there are some hints or some things you can look for. So, if you've been weighing yourself regularly, you know what that normal up and down is. And that's what that fluctuation is. It's really water weight gain and loss, right? You're kind of doing that over time and a little bit of fat probably gain and loss, but most of it's water. So you kind of know that natural fluctuation. Also, if you gain three pounds or five pounds in a day, what is it, Jim?

**Jim Hill:** That's not fat. That's water. You don't gain that much fat in one day. You can gain a little bit, but not three pounds. If it's three pounds, you can pretty much bet that all or most of it is water.

**Holly Wyatt:** Right. Even a whole pound. I mean, it's really hard. You could probably do it, but it's really hard. That's not how you gain fat. You don't gain it that way. The body adjusts. There are lots of things. If you're gaining fat, you're gaining a little bit each time. You're not gaining a whole pound or three pounds or five pounds. So another reason why you need to be weighing yourself every day so you can see, oh my, weight went up.

**Jim Hill:** Those fluctuations will capture some of those fluctuations in water, right? Because that's one of the things that's driving the fact it doesn't weigh exactly the same every morning when you weigh yourself.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah. So you can kind of see that and you start to notice things. So for instance, I notice when I eat pizza, I always, almost always the next morning, I'm three to four pounds heavier. It's probably a combination of it's a high-carb meal for me. I tend to eat a little bit lower carb, high protein. And when I eat pizza, I tend with the crust and everything. It tends to be a little bit of a high carb and then salt.

Tends to be a high-sodium meal for me. So those two combinations, I know because I've been weighing myself that I can, that sales going to be up three pounds, but I can know that that's water. I know that that's not fat gain.

**Jim Hill:** So what kind of variation in daily weight do you see in most people, Holly?

**Holly Wyatt:** Well, it's different. And this is why if you've been collecting data on yourself, you know what that normal variation is. But I would say anywhere from three to eight pounds, people who have a lot of muscle, tend to actually have higher fluctuations in water because they can store glycogen as carbohydrate. Carbohydrate can be stored as glycogen in their muscles and they have a bigger depot, a bigger place, a lot more where they can do that. And every kind of molecule, like to think about every molecule of glycogen, you store two molecules of water with it.

So every time you store a little bit of glycogen, you kind of sink some water in there. And so they tend to have bigger swings. They will lose, you know, three to five pounds in a day. They'll gain three to five pounds in a day.

Men, I tend to see have a little bit higher fluctuation than women, which would go with they usually have a higher muscle mass. If your weight can fluctuate 10 pounds in a week, that's probably all water, mostly water.

**Jim Hill:** That's not going to be fat. You're not going to change your fat content by 10 pounds a week. I guarantee you.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah. And there are some people whose weight doesn't do that. They're like, it's two or three pounds. That's really all that really ever goes up no matter what I'm eating, no matter what I'm doing.

**Jim Hill:** So basically you need to know what your variation is. It doesn't matter what the average is. Everybody differs. And again, what we've talked about before is weigh yourself every day for a week and see how much fluctuation you get from day to day.

**Holly Wyatt:** And start paying attention to patterns, like I said, I recognize some patterns in myself. And you may say, well, why is this important? It's important because if you just gained water, we don't need to do, we can just wait.

That's going to come off. We don't have to do anything. If you've gained three, four pounds of fat, we're going to take some action. So that's why it's important to be able to recognize the difference. You don't want to chase water.

**Jim Hill:** So you don't want to change things based on one weight. And my weight's up five pounds. Oh my gosh, I got to go out and do something drastic. Make sure it's your pattern changes, not your single day's weight.

**Holly Wyatt:** I mean, if I was doing that, I would be changing something all the time because my weight's up and down all the time. I would be trying to lose weight or prevent more weight. I would be doing something and changing something all the time.

So it really, this is really important. And I see people all the time that are what I call their water chasers. Oh my gosh, I'm down two pounds or I'm up two pounds and they, and they, and they freak out and I'm like, but that's not, that's water. You don't want to chase that because it's not going to make any sense. This is also why I like the average of the week. Getting an average and looking at the change in the average or looking at the peak, you know, the highest weight. Is your highest weight going up? That may be gaining fat versus if it's just kind of bouncing around, the average is staying the same. I feel pretty good to say that's all water fluctuation.

Now, one more thing, though, I did want to just say there are lots of reasons why you can gain water. I mean, the easy ones are the things that we think about are food, that you've eaten certain foods that will cause you to hold on to water. But one thing that I see frequently people don't even consider is when you work out and you kind of stress your muscles, your muscles then will hold on to water to repair themselves. So when you're sore, you're going to hold on to a lot of water. And it's counterintuitive because people say, oh, I just did a big leg day, right? I did a big leg day. I burned so many calories in the gym. I was doing this and I got on the scale the next morning and I was up five pounds. And I just, I went to the gym and I killed it and I'm up five pounds. And I'm like, that's water. We know it's water, right?

**Jim Hill:** Interesting.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah. So think about things like that. And one thing, though, that I did want to say that there are medical conditions like heart failure, kidney disease, where if you are gaining water, you do need to talk to your doctor. There are times that your weight going up because you're holding onto water would be something that would be important for you. So talking to your doctor is important in those kinds of conditions. Or if you notice that suddenly you have swelling in your feet, you need to go to your doctor. There are times when gaining water is a sign that you need to pursue.

**Jim Hill:** All right. Number three, this, I love this one, Holly. So if it is fat, if it's not the water changes, identify the big bucket reason for gain. So I told you, the reason is going to be somewhere. It's not magic. It's going to be in what are our big three, your food intake, your physical activity, your mind state. So you're going to have to be a detective, be a sleuth, and figure out where it is. So you have to ask yourself, is the reason I'm gaining weight, is it my food intake? Is it my physical activity? Or is it my mindset?

**Holly Wyatt:** And Jim, what I tell people here, don't get in the weeds yet. They tend to get in the weeds. Oh, well, I had that cookie that day. And then I'm like, no, no, no, back it up, back it up, big picture? Is it around what you're eating? Do you think it's around how much you're moving? Or is there kind of a mindset? And even if there's a mindset piece to it, it's affecting what they're eating or how much they're moving.

**Jim Hill:** And that's what we know is that your mindset affects all your behavior. So if it is your mindset, it could be affecting the other two. So it's got to be something. You've got to either be eating a little bit more, moving a little bit less, having low motivation, coming up with excuses. Something is causing this weight gain and you need to figure out what it is.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah. So a lot of times when I get to this step, so this is step three and I'm talking to people, they'll say, I know what it is. I know I've changed my eating. I'm eating bigger meals at night. I'm snacking during the day. They'll tell me without a doubt they know. But sometimes people say, I don't know. I really don't know what's happened. So something's happened in the fall, something's happened, but I don't know why. And here's where we go to logging, Jim.

**Jim Hill:** Oh, the infamous logging, writing down what you eat, writing down your physical activity patterns or monitoring. You can monitor your physical activity with your devices, but keeping track objectively. Write it down.

**Holly Wyatt:** Right. So if you don't know what it is, then we've got to log. And I know some of you who are listening who I probably helped with this in the past, you know it's coming. I'm always like, all right, we're going to keep a log. We're going to figure it out.

**Jim Hill:** But I hear, Holly, that the logs aren't great for getting your total calorie intake. Is that the reason you keep them?

**Holly Wyatt:** No, I think we keep the logs because it's more for patterns, more for seeing differences, more for looking for maybe things you normally wouldn't eat. It allows you to see that. You can try to keep track of calories. And sometimes I have people do that, but you're right. It's not very accurate for that. But I do think it is helpful to do it for food.

**Jim Hill:** But we'll talk to people and they'll keep records and they'll say, oh my gosh, I didn't realize I ate that. And you think, well, why wouldn't you realize it? Because eating is so automatic that we sometimes don't focus on it. Writing it down in a log will help you see, oh my gosh, I had this or that last week. And it'll help you troubleshoot it a little bit.

**Holly Wyatt:** And one of the things I do sometimes with clients is I have them keep a photo log. So in other words, they're going to take a picture of everything they're eating. So because sometimes you're in the middle and you just write something down and you really don't register all, you know, what it was. And sometimes you can do that with your phone. And I think that's helpful. And sometimes just by logging, you reverse it. Just logging is a strategy that sometimes will have you eat less and you'll notice that the weight's gone than you thought.

**Jim Hill:** Absolutely. Also on the physical activity side, you take a look at, has your physical activity patterns changed. And again, it's so easy to measure more objectively with physical activity. You can do it with a step counter, or your phone. My phone keeps track of steps and minutes of activity. So pay attention, look back over your patterns to say, oh my gosh, I got way fewer steps in the last two weeks than before. And that might be part of your problem. And it could be a little of both. It could be you're eating a little bit more and moving a little bit less. But if you pay attention, you can sort of figure out maybe where you need to change some things up.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah, on the physical activity side, I definitely think it's important to look at planned activity. Has that decreased in the fall? Because for me, I like to run outside. And in the fall, that changes. So my planned activity, I have to really work at keeping those planned activity minutes up, but also looking at lifestyle because the days are shorter and sometimes then I'm not walking as much or we got teachers going back to school. We got things changing. So you want to really look at both lifestyles in terms of like kind of total steps because that can be why you're if that's gone down, that could be part of it or your total planned minutes. And then, Jim, I don't know, because of some of the podcasts we've done recently, what about sitting? What about sedentary time?

**Jim Hill:** Oh, I think that's a big one. And does your phone measure sitting? I think it measures inactivity.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah.

**Jim Hill:** That's a good one. Because, again, people spend so much of their day sitting that over time, if you find that over the last few weeks, you were sitting more than usual, that could be a cause of potential weight gains. That's a good one.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah. So at least think about that. And if you can kind of keep track of it, that might be something.

**Jim Hill:** Is there anything different you've done that would involve significantly more sitting, say, over the past little while?

**Holly Wyatt:** And that's exactly what you're trying to do. Be a detective. Really look at it. What is different, you know with that kind of almost curiosity. What is different really? All right. Step four. What is it? Step four. We're already there.

**Jim Hill:** Dig deeper.

**Holly Wyatt:** Dig deeper.

**Jim Hill:** And that again is being a detective. You just don't look at what you've found. You look at why it happened. So once you identify, well, it's probably because I was eating more. Ask yourself why. Why? Is it something that, oh, yeah, I had company that week and now I'm back to normal? or is there some more underlying reason? So dig into the details. And this is where your food log and your exercise patterns can help a little bit too. Once you see it and you say, ah, I see what the problem is, figure out why you had that problem.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah, this is important because what you're going to do about it is going to be really focused on the why. We don't want to just say, well, I'm going to eat less. If let's say you say, okay, I'm eating more. It's not, it's not very helpful to say, I'm just going to eat less. But if you say, okay, why am I eating more? Is it specifically because I've been going out to eat more in the evenings? Is it specifically because I've been kind of feeling like I want some comfort food when I come in, from work? Now we're starting to get into something we can be strategic about, and it's going to be helpful.

So you want to look for patterns. You want to look for being really specific. You don't want to just keep it broad. You want to start broad, big picture, not in the weeds. And then once you think you know you've got the big bucket, now we're going into the weeds. Now I start asking questions, getting into those patterns, because I'm going to look for a pattern I can do something about.

**Jim Hill:** Ah, and that brings us to step five. So you've been a detective, you figured it out, you say, oh, I think I see the problem. Now you have to take strategic action. How do you do that, Holly?

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah, so this isn't just random action. And this is a place where I think people make a mistake. They think, okay, it's about my food. And they just kind of just randomly decide, I'm going to, like I said, I'm going to eat less or I'm going to move more. And that just doesn't work. We don't want to just cast a broad net. We want to really go in on the problem that you're having. Be strategic. So based on your hypothesis, and it really is a hypothesis, this is what I think is going on. You may be wrong.

**Jim Hill:** Yeah, yeah. Be a detective. Detectives develop theories and they test it out. And if that one's wrong, they come up with another one.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah. And I always say, you know, I'll just make it a game. I think this is what's going on. Now, based on what I think is going on. What strategic action could I do that could help me with that? And you know what we say, what do we always think about when it's like, what can help you out? Routines and rituals? Can I put a new routine and ritual in place? Can I change my environment? And what can I do that's going to help with whatever I've decided is probably my guess or my hypothesis about why I'm gaining the weight. And yet, go for that. You go for the jugular.

**Jim Hill:** And motivation is important here. You need to take a look at, has your motivation waned? Or do you need to go back and go back to your deeper why and think a little bit more about, do you need some external motivation to get back on track?

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah, because sometimes when I'm talking to people, they really say, you know, I know what's going on, but I can almost even just tell they just don't have that energy to change it. And that is important because really then working on that motivation may be where we want to kind of strategize instead of that.

**Jim Hill:** Well, that comes back to mindset. With the right kind of mindset, you can go back and adjust your food intake and physical activity to get back on track.

**Holly Wyatt:** So if that motivation is really, you know, it's like, I know what's going on and I just don't want to do it. I just don't have any energy to do it or I don't really care about doing it, then we're going to work more on the motivation piece than the actual strategies around the food or around the activity because I can give you a bunch of strategies, but if you're not going to do them, they're not going to help. So you got to go for that motivation piece if that's the issue.

**Jim Hill:** Okay. So the last one, step six, monitor and adjust. After you take action, See what happened. It's like you have a hypothesis. I think this is a problem. This is what I'm going to do. Now, see if it's working. If it's working, great. You're back on track. If it's not, you need to adjust your strategy. Oh, I thought it was food intake, but I went back to this and that doesn't seem to be it. Maybe my secondary thing is maybe it's activity. So you go back, have another hypothesis, come up with another strategy, and see if it's working.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah. Or you may keep that food strategy in place and then add on another one until you find that right combination. But I always say, just be curious, be a scientist, and say, okay, this is what I thought. Now I'm going to I'm going to pivot a little bit. I'm going to change it just a little bit. And the key is to keep weighing yourself so you know what's going on. You're having more data coming in. And I always say go for at least a couple of weeks.

**Jim Hill:** Yeah, I don't go with the single measurements. Oh, I adjusted my food intake and I'm down three pounds. No, no, no. You got to do at least a week, hopefully two weeks to see if your average is back on track.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah, you need that much data. You have to have that much data really to know for sure whether your strategy is working or if your strategy is not working. I would say if your high weights, the highest weight for a week is going down, I feel pretty good it's working. If my average for a week after two weeks, if I can see the average of those weeks going down, feel like it's working or if it's stabilized, maybe my goal is not necessarily for it to go down, but I'm not going to gain anymore. So stabilization might be what you're going for.

**Jim Hill:** Okay. Those are six steps. Now, to even be more helpful, let's take a few listener questions on the topic, Holly.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah. So we had a few that I thought fit with this topic. And so the first one, and I like this one because this really gets into what we like to talk about when we talk about weight loss versus weight loss maintenance. So the question comes from Andrea. She says, I've already gained a few pounds this fall. Is it too late to reverse it?

**Jim Hill:** Ah.

**Holly Wyatt:** Too late to reverse it.

**Jim Hill:** The answer, Holly, is no.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah, it's never too late. It's never too late. So obviously, it's not too late to reverse it. But what I like to point out in this question is, what are you wanting to do? Are you wanting to prevent more weight gain? Or are you really wanting to reverse it? Which is what? Weight loss. And so what you would do to prevent more weight gain, which is maintaining your current weight, and what you would do to actually cause a weight loss might be different. So I think it's important to recognize what are you wanting to do? It's not too late to prevent and it's not too late to lose a few pounds.

**Jim Hill:** But you need to decide.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yes, what you would do.

**Jim Hill:** We've seen lots of instances where people gained a few pounds back and then said, well, to heck with it. I just, it ain't going to work. I've gained half my weight back. I'm just going to gain it all back. And again, it's never too late. If you've gained half of it, but you're still ahead. Don't relapse all the way. And again, think about, do you just want to stabilize where you are or do you want to get back into weight loss?

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah. So if you're wanting to actually lose weight, if you've gained a certain amount of weight and you're wanting to lose, you're going to have to really clamp down on the nutrition. This isn't about just putting you back in energy balance. This is, you know, what we're doing with preventing weight gain, right? Reestablishing balance. If you want to lose weight, you're going to have to do even something a little bit different, which is going to involve for sure nutrition, most likely to be able to be in a negative energy balance for you to lose weight. For me, I allow myself a couple of pounds of weight gain in the fall, right? That's success for me. Two or three pounds is okay. That's what I allow myself. And then if I go up above that, then I'm going to be in weight loss. But I'm very strategic. What I'm doing for weight loss maintenance is not the same as what I do if I'm wanting to lose two or three pounds.

**Jim Hill:** That's important. Okay, here's a question from Bob. What should I do, If I know what's causing my weight gain, but I don't have the motivation to change. It's back to mindset. If you go out and try to change the behavior, it isn't going to work because the motivation's not there. And we've done a whole podcast on motivation, and it's important to find motivation. First thing we always say is go back to your deep why, and hopefully you've written it down. Why is weight loss really important to you? The real emotional reason that's important. And sometimes that will help. But you always talk about you need a little fuel on the fire too. And there's some external things you can do in the short term. The deep motivation is the internal motivation. That's the powerful one. There's a lot of external motivations that you can do to help. You can give yourself a challenge that if you go back and fix what you think was the The problem, you're going to reward yourself, not with food, Holly, with a vacation or a new something, a new outfit or something. So go back to internal motivation, look at your why, and then think about some external motivators that you might use to get back on track.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah, I totally agree with that. I think that the key in this question is if you've identified its motivation, then let's work on that first. We got to get the mind right first. First, working on strategies, if there's no motivation, usually does not lead to success, at least in my experience. I've had people where I've given them a list of things to do, a way to eat, an activity plan, and it just kind of goes in the trash because they're just not motivated to do it. You can have the best strategy in the world, But if you don't do it, it doesn't matter what you decided. So if it really is a motivational issue, let's deal with that motivation first, just like you talked about, before we go in and really say, okay, what am I going to do to my food? What can I do for my activity? Because you won't do it otherwise.

I agree. When my motivation gets low, and I tend to have some problems with it this time of year because I tend to, I think with the lack of sunshine, I get a little bit depressed. I can get a little bit in a funky mood. I use external motivators. I like putting some fuel on the fire. I like using that, realizing they're short-term, but it can get me through a period of time. And then that internal motivation can grow. So I usually like some type of challenge that's external where I get something, I get a reward to help me move forward. All right. One more question.

**Jim Hill:** Go for it.

**Holly Wyatt:** Okay, let's see. This one is from Carolyn. What if I can't pinpoint the reason for any of my weight gain? Everything looks fine. I've logged, but the scale keeps going up. What do I do?

**Jim Hill:** What do you do?

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah. So this happens. Sometimes you go through those steps and I'll get to the end and I'll like, okay, I've looked at people's food logs. I've looked at their activity logs. Motivation seems to be good and the scale is still going up. What do you do? It's a hard one. But in this case, what I would usually say is, Jim, if you had to guess, I'll ask you this. You had to guess. If you've logged, so you've looked at activity, you've looked at food, knowing what we knew about logging, know what we know about how good it is, how successful you can be at logging and stuff. Where do you think there's probably the mismatch? Where's most likely at this point the mismatch?

**Jim Hill:** In food intake.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah.

**Jim Hill:** Because it's so hard to judge food intake. where we're not perfect at physical activity, but have a little better ability to be objective. So if you're pretty sure that your activity patterns haven't changed in a major way, it's probably your food intake.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah, and you've measured it. I always make a measure and I want to see the minutes, I want to see the steps, because I think you can be unaware. But I feel like we can get a pretty good measurement of that. And so if I can't see it in the log, I'm going to suspect it's food, then that's what we're going to work on at this point. The other thing sometimes I would do is change it up at some point. We could then just do a random strategy. If I can't really pinpoint it, if I really can't figure it out, I can go random. But I usually look at the food and do something with the food at this point. The other thing though, and I do want to put this out there, is if you are gaining weight, there are medical reasons why you could be gaining weight.

It could be your thyroid. You definitely could have some hormonal issues. There could be some reasons. And so at this point, there are times when I say, hey, why don't you go see your doctor? You may want to get some blood tests. Let's just make sure everything is normal when we can't find a reason for unexplained, basically, weight gain at this point.

**Jim Hill:** All right, Holly, it's time for the vulnerability questions. So I will ask you, what's the biggest weight challenge you face during the fall?

**Holly Wyatt:** Oh, definitely activity because I am a summer, hot weather, outside runner. Love it. It's my motivation. It's my meditation. I love to sweat, but I do not like to run in the cold weather. So definitely I have to switch. And that definitely is my biggest challenge is to keep those activity minutes up. And every year I know I struggle at this point. All right, Jim, what about you? Do you face any challenges in the fall?

**Jim Hill:** Yeah, well, you know, Holly, my strategy in weight management is to get a whole lot of exercise so I can eat a lot. That's what I love to do. Trish and I go on these bicycle trips and we're heading off for a bicycle trip. So I've been training like crazy. I've been exercising. I need whatever I want and I don't gain weight. The problem is going to be after the bike trip, I'm not going to train like that anymore. And so I'm probably going to have to adjust my food intake down a little bit. So that's the challenge that I'm going to face.

**Holly Wyatt:** So would you rather do that or would you rather work on keeping your activity high so you can eat anything you want?

**Jim Hill:** I'd rather do that, but I think I won't be able to spend quite as much time after the bike trip as I did beforehand, just because it's a challenging bike trip. And I've been doing three or four really long rides a week, and I won't be able to continue that in the fall. So energy balance, I think my activity, I think it's an activity still going to be high, but not as high. So I may have to adjust my food intake down a little bit.

**Holly Wyatt:** Got it.

**Jim Hill:** All right. Troubleshooting guide. This is great. So to recap, catch weight early. Don't wait until January and have a resolution. You do that with a simple device, the scale. Weigh yourself so you know if you're starting to gain weight. Don't use a single weight, one to two weeks at least. If you are gaining weight and it's not the daily fluctuation, it's somewhere in energy balance. It's calories in or calories out.

So you have to be a little bit of a detective. Figure out where you think it is. Come up with a hypothesis. Then take action. And once you take action, go back and see if it worked. If it didn't, come back and develop another hypothesis. The major thing, though, do something as soon as you can to keep from regaining the weight. You worked so hard to get it off. Even if you've gone up a little bit, you don't want to go all the way.

You can get back on track. So hopefully this is a little bit of a helpful troubleshooting guide. Figure out what your problem is and come up with a strategy. If that doesn't work, come up with another one.

**Holly Wyatt:** Stay ahead of the game.

**Jim Hill:** Okay, well, we will see you next time I'm on Weight Loss And.

**Holly Wyatt:** Bye, everybody.

**Jim Hill:** And that's a wrap for today's episode of Weight Loss and. We hope you enjoy diving into the world of weight loss with us.

**Holly Wyatt:** If you want to stay connected and continue exploring the “Ands” of weight loss, be sure to follow our podcast on your favorite platform.

**Jim Hill:** We'd also love to hear from you. Share your thoughts, questions, or topic suggestions by reaching out at [weightlossand.com](http://weightlossand.com/). Your feedback helps us tailor future episodes to your needs.

**Holly Wyatt:** And remember, the journey doesn't end here. Keep applying the knowledge and strategies you've learned and embrace the power of the “And” in your own weight loss journey.