When Weight Maintenance Isn’t the Same as Ease
Decades-long weight loss can feel like undeniable proof—but the truth is more complicated. Plus: why "keeping weight off" may not equate to having an easy or healthy relationship with your body.
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Today’s Q&A is sparked by a reader trying to navigate a tough conversation with their mom, whose decades-long weight loss is often held up as evidence against weight-inclusive care, non-diet approaches, and the natural diversity of body sizes.
Here is the question:
“Hey Abbie — would love your advice / take on this. I’ve been struggling with it for a while.
My mom lost weight thirty years ago and kept it off. She uses that as proof that long-term weight loss is sustainable. I’ve read the research. I know most people regain. But every time I try to explain that, she points to her own body.
How do I argue with that? And why does it make me feel like I’m the unreasonable one?”
It’s funny (ironic) that this question came in when it did.
Because several weeks ago, I began drafting an essay on this same topic in preparation for an interview (more debate) that I wasn’t ultimately able to attend due to some unexpected health things. Part of the debate was on the idea that body positivity is dangerous and that weight loss is possible if you just try hard enough.
This particular person had built their brand on helping people lose weight, and used some of those “success stories” (their own included) as proof that everyone can do it with real commitment and ‘no excuses.’ It really got me thinking about the cost of that “success” and the truth behind what it takes to “achieve” it; and so, as I do when I need to process things, I started writing.
Back to this specific reader’s question.
I want to start by acknowledging how difficult this is on so many levels. Discussing weight loss and body size with a parent is a uniquely disorienting kind of tension, because you’re not speaking to a stranger on the internet. You’re sitting across from someone who raised you. Someone whose lived experience feels louder than any statistic you could quote.
For many people, a mother’s body can feel like Exhibit A—the exhibit they grew up observing quite closely (not to mention it’s one that, at least statistically speaking, was most likely to impact our own body image).
Of course, your mom is not wrong about her own personal experience.
Some people do lose weight and maintain that loss for decades. And.
When researchers look at large populations over time, the pattern is very clear: roughly 95-98% of people regain all the lost weight within several years, and a significant number regain more than they lost (this is part of weight cycling, and a protective response from the body, which we’ll get into shortly). GLP-1s, when taken for weight loss, are following this same pattern.
So yes, long-term maintenance happens, and it is the statistical minority. Both of these statements can be true at once.
The problem is that we’re often comparing two very different kinds of evidence. A personal anecdote feels intimate and—as you mentioned in your question—undeniable. Population data feels abstract and quite literally less close to home. But physiology operates at the population level, not the dinner-table level.
So the real question isn’t whether long-term maintenance exists in a small percentage of people, it’s what kind of maintenance we’re talking about.
And the cost of that maintenance—to our mental well-being, to our long-term physical health, to our relationships, to our purpose, and to every single cell and system in our body.
Because there’s a meaningful difference between a body that is regulating its own weight within a rough range—and a body that is being held, deliberately and continuously, below where it would otherwise settle to feel safe. Understanding the difference between these, and what that difference represents, is something I think may help you navigate this conversation with your mom. Let’s start there, because before you argue statistics, it helps to understand what “maintenance” might actually mean.