Anybody Balloon UP Before HItting Goal?

I am doing some informal research and would like to talk to anyone who hit their goal weight within 18 months but before they got there gained 10 - 30lbs (or more actually).

I have some ideas about how our metabolisms behave when we've been on a long term weight slide and I also recognize the pattern of those of us that are close and how the weight loss rate and our resting metabolic rate tend to go way down. I have a few questions like:

1) How much weight did you gain after you hit your lowest point before gaining and then proceed to your goal? and what was your low before the gain?

2) Was it a one time incident or did you yo-yo your way to goal?

3) After your gain did your weight loss rate pick up? and was it smooth sailing all the way to goal?

4) Have you maintained your loss?

5) Were you able to stop at goal or did you sail right past it?

I had a thought yesterday that when we gain weight and try to lose it seems to be a step pattern we gain 20 lbs lose 10 and then that 10lb net gain becomes our new normal then we creep up, lose a little step up and next thing we know we are 300+lbs. I wonder if the opposite works. If we work our way down to say within 10 lbs of our goal and weight loss slows, then we put on 10+ lbs and then go back to losing if the reverse momentum carries us through the slow part. 

Don't anyone worry I have not intention of trying this or experimenting with it, but I think it is an interesting concept that might be worth digging into a bit and would really be revolutionary if we find this pattern to be prevalent.

Let's Hear IT!

I'm not quite sure I understand the question. If someone balloons up as much as 10-30 lbs before they hit goal, I would think that something ELSE is going on. To gain that much weight any time during a weight loss would scream out (at least to me) that the person is no longer in the weight loss phase.

As you already know, my metabolism has been climbing (1886 RMR as of Monday).

Most of the people who want to get to a specific weight would be freaking out if they gained more than a couple of lbs at any given time during weight loss. The rest of the people (including my own stall for 8 months) were dealing with something or just not that into getting to their weight goal--for whatever reason. So, I don't think they can be counted in what you are looking at because I think you want people who are ACTIVELY losing weight and then balloon up.

If someone came on the forum and said that they were doing everything right with protein, die****er, etc and they gained 10-30 lbs and they had proof through logging etc, I would tell them not to walk to the doctor, but RUN.

I haven't seen that pattern online at all. I've been online in the WLS and WL forums since Feb. of 2008 so I've seen a lot, too. I've never seen a person not get to their goal, gain 10-30 pounds and then later one lose it and get to goal, in fact. Generally, people start gaining before they even get to their goal, this is the start of a pattern of yo-yo dieting where they gain the same 10-50 pounds over and over and often times their "floor" weight gradually goes up during that time, about 10 pounds at at time.

The much more common pattern is to get down to some floor, whether it's your goal weight or not, then gain back 5-20 pounds and that's your new floor. Then there may be periods of regain where they go up from the new floor for a while due to life cir****tances. Some of those people then go back down when cir****tances change but some then have a new floor that is higher than it was and continue to stair-step up in weight over the decades.