I know it’s very individual and personal to you.
Also, the same thing happened to about half the population (weight gain during pandemic).
Your not alone in your pain, nor are you a singular failure. But lucky you, you know how to get out of the hole. Most everyone else doesn’t know the way out.
Don’t feel bad, we’ve all been there before. You can definitely get to where you want to be again. Focus on one day at a time.
I lost 75 lbs doing fasting and omad over the course of 6-7 months. I kept it off for more than 5 years. After getting into an awful car accident and doing nothing at all during my recovery I gained a little more half of it back. I never ever imagined I’d gain any weight but how could I not. Being inactive while trying to heal… it was almost impossible not to gain some weight. Fast forward to now I am back to fasting regularly and feeling much better. The weight will come back off again.
Well, it seems that you realize that you are using food to cope with some sort of emotions or conditions that are difficult for you. That is the good news.
The bad news (temporarily) is you are going to have to figure out what those emotions are and work through it.
You may want to consider if certain foods trigger certain eating patterns for you. Everyone’s brain is wired differently and some people respond to some forms of carbohydrates in such a way that once it enters their body they physically cannot stop.
Wishing you the best and as someone else said, it is one day at a time from here on out.
The more you yoyo diet like this, the more effort your body will make to gain and hold onto fat by slowing your metabolism. This is why fasting typically works great to begin with, then doesn’t.
The best option is to look at what you are eating, minimise foods that promote weight gain, maximise foods that increase metabolism, exercise and don’t eat too much.
Maintenance is a process of figuring out what your food limits are. Good news is you know you can do it.
Consider you might need take a two path approach to get back in fasting mode. One part physical one part mental.
Physical. Consider fat fasting until your body says I can’t eat anymore fat. Google fat fasting. Lots of ways to fat fast. I try to keep it simple and boring. E.g. Bacon eggs olives Sardines avocados. 🫒 as you decrease the insulin in your body by fat fasting, your cravings go down and water fasting is much easier. There is more beneficial activity with regards to you hormons as well but not going down that rabbit hole today.
Taking care of the physical 1st makes the mental a bit easier. All I will say on the mental is… be gentle with yourself. Opps had an earing stumble.. now I know what doesn’t work. Ook time to experiment until you find the right combo. Curiosity is a much easier viewpoint that beating up on yourself. You cN be curious about you body process during fasting and refeeding.
Just from personal experience my body is an adaptation genius. It likes homeostasis.so I have to change my fasting schkdule almost weekly to keep my body guessing and when I get tired if fasting with water only I go to fat fasting.
Welcome back to the fasting lifestyle! You got this!