Weight Loss Maintenance
Weight Loss Maintenance
After you’ve gotten to your goal weight, what are some things you can do to ensure that you stay there?
First of all, you need to know where you stand. Weigh yourself no less than once weekly. Daily would not be too much. If you catch your weight creeping up you can do something about it before it gets out of hand. Consider something like the “four pound rule” which means that if your weight goes up 4 pounds you start to tweak your eating and exercise habits to get it back down to where it should be before it becomes out of control. This does not need to be an official “diet”. This is simply lifestyle maintenance.
Do not constantly wear stretchy pants and skirts. Weight itself is not the only indicator to look for. Your weight could be creeping up if you are doing a lot of weight lifting or other strength based exercises that increase your muscle mass. Since muscle weighs more you could be gaining muscle. The opposite is also true, just because your weight is not going up you could be losing muscle mass if you’ve gotten more sedentary than when you were on your weight loss diet. So wear tight fighting clothes several times a week to monitor the actual size of your body.
Get rid of your “fat” clothes. By keeping them around you are telling your subconscious that you are going to be needing them again. This causes your subconscious to help make that happen!
Keep up with any exercise routine you started when you went on your weight loss diet. Exercise is just as needed for maintenance (and more importantly for overall good health) as it is for the initial weight loss.
Keep up with your healthy eating choices. No, you don’t have to be a “fanatic”, whatever that really is, but you do still need to make healthy choices and not make junk food a daily indulgence. Keep your favorite junk foods to real authentic special occasions, if at all.
Make sure to keep drinking plenty of water. You can just as easily be fooled into thinking that you are hungry instead of thirsty in the maintenance phase of your weight loss journey as you can in the initial losing phase.
Make sure you get your 7-9 hours of restful sleep. Without proper sleep we are prone to getting extra hungry and do not metabolize food as proficiently, both of which tend to make us gain weight.
Be aware of who you are eating with. We tend to end up looking like who we hang around with the most and to mimic their eating styles. This does not mean that you have to give up eating out with your best friend forever but you may need to take more mental energy to avoid copying her bad eating example. Be mentally aware of this need will help you to do it.
What are some other ways that you use to keep maintaining your goal weight? Share in the comment section below.