Why Solving Repeated Weight Regain Is a Different Kind of Problem

When we know how to solve a problem, taking action makes sense. A light stops working, we replace the globe. A tyre is flat, we repair it. The cause is identifiable, the solution is known and the result is reasonably predictable.

Other problems require more coordination. These are Complicated. Renovating a kitchen involves trades, budgets, measurements, materials and timing. There are many things to manage, but they can still be separated into parts and organised towards a planned result.

Then there are complex problems.

What makes them complex isn't simply the number of things involved. It is the way those things interact. Change one part and something else can change with it. A sensible solution to one problem can create another. The conditions themselves can shift as we intervene. That distinction matters when we think about repeated weight regain.

A number on the scales doesn't tell us what kind of problem we have. Weight gain can occur under relatively straightforward circumstances. A temporary change in routine might change eating, activity and weight. When the circumstances return to normal, the problem may resolve without requiring much further investigation.

Repeated weight regain contains different information.

When someone has lost a substantial amount of weight, regained it, lost weight again and subsequently regained it again, we are no longer looking at one isolated episode.

We are looking at recurrence when solving repeated weight regain

The number on the scales tells us where her weight is today. It doesn't show the sequence that brought her there. That sequence matters because repeated weight regain has characteristics of a complex problem. What happens during one attempt does not necessarily disappear when that attempt ends.

Previous solutions become part of the history

Every attempt to lose weight takes place within the conditions created by what came before it. A woman might enter her first diet with relatively few ideas about how she “should” eat. Several attempts later, she may have accumulated rules about carbohydrates, portions, meal timing, snacks, eating out or foods she no longer trusts herself around.

Her experience of dieting has changed too. Previous restriction, hunger, success, disappointment and regain all become information she brings to the next attempt.

The starting conditions have changed.

This is one of the important features of a complex problem: intervening in the system can change the system.

It means weight loss and weight regain cannot always be treated as two unrelated events, with the first considered solved and the second treated as a new problem.

The whole sequence matters.

Successful weight loss and successful resolution are not the same thing

This also allows us to be more precise about dieting. A diet can successfully produce weight loss. If someone changes her eating and loses 12 kilograms, that result is real. Calling the diet unsuccessful ignores what happened.

But if our problem is repeated weight regain, losing the weight is only one part of the outcome.

We also need to include what happened afterwards.

This distinction changes the standard by which a solution is judged. Instead of looking only at whether an intervention produced its intended immediate result, we look at what happened across the whole pattern. That is a very different form of problem solving.

Complexity requires a wider investigation

Recognising repeated weight regain as complex does not mean making it unnecessarily complicated. It means resisting the temptation to reduce a repeating problem to its most visible outcome.

Weight is visible. Food is tangible. Calories are measurable. That makes them easy places to concentrate our attention. But a repeating pattern contains more information than today's weight or today's eating can show us.

Understanding that pattern requires looking at what has happened across time, how previous interventions changed the circumstances surrounding later ones, and which parts of the problem may be interacting.

Because weight regain isn't a simple overeating problem with a simple dieting solution.

And expecting a complex problem to behave like a simple one can keep us applying solutions without ever fully understanding the problem they are intended to solve.

Listen to the Podcast Episode: Or wherever you get your Podcasts

Free download: The Three Types of Problems Cheat Sheet provides a quick visual guide to the distinctions discussed in this episode.