Being able to drop the pounds is only the start of your new lifestyle as being able to keep the weight off is your ultimate goal. Yes, you do want to achieve your target weight. However, it doesn’t stop there. Always remember that you’re thinking in the long-term when you have weight management in mind.
If you think that the pounds will automatically stay off after you reach your goal weight, you’re likely one of the many dieters at risk of regaining the pounds. To keep the weight off, you need to have a long-term healthy lifestyle strategy ready to go.
Keep the Weight Off with an Ongoing Strategy
Losing weight comes with what can feel like a great deal of sacrifice and self discipline, particularly at the beginning. It means that you need to take on more exercise than you used to do, and you need to change your eating habits. At first, this often means reducing or eliminating some of the treat foods that you love the most.
For that reason, after all of the work that you’ve put into reducing your weight, it is very important that you take the necessary action to ensure that it doesn’t come back after it’s gone. To drop the pounds, you need to honor the efforts you made to lose it in the first place. Indeed, you won’t need to be as restrictive while you’re maintaining your goal weight. However, you need to remember that you can’t return to your old habits, either. Otherwise, you’ll only watch the body fat climbing once again.
Reaching your goal on the scale is only truly beneficial if you are able to keep weight off, and those pounds of excess fat don’t creep their way back on to your belly, butt, and thighs.
Steps to Maintain Your Goal for Good
Use the following strategies to make sure that you keep weight off and it never comes back again after you’ve worked hard to lose it in the first place.
- 1. Keep your scale – Even though you’re not weighing yourself to monitor weight loss, you should still step on the scale every week or two to be sure that the pounds aren’t slowly creeping back on again. Remember that weight gain is often very gradual, making it hard to notice in yourself until your clothing starts to get tighter. By that point, you may already have gained up to ten pounds. Keep tracking your weight long-term as you did when you were losing the pounds. Make a habit of it so you’ll always know where you stand.
- 2. Make a “naughty” list – There are foods that you know aren’t weight friendly, but this doesn’t mean they’re banned. It only means that you need to keep monitoring your portion size or the frequency with which you eat them. You may want to be able to treat yourself to them every now and again. There’s nothing wrong with that as long as they remain a rare treat.
Whenever you do indulge, simply track it as you did while you were losing weight. That way, you’ll remain accountable for your treat foods. It will keep you aware of the frequency with which you treat yourself. By remaining mindful, you won’t let your new healthy lifestyle slip backward into habits that caused you to gain pounds in the first place. - 3. Identify your bad habits – You likely already know which habits caused you to gain the weight originally (for example, a daily morning donut, a sedentary lifestyle, or a desire to skip the need for cooking by buying prepared meals). Make sure that you never forget what caused the issue by giving yourself reminders not to build those habits again. Start your grocery list with “no frozen dinners” if this was your weakness. When you plan what you want to have for dinner that night, top your list of ideas with what you won’t have: “not pizza”, for example. Place a post-it on your remote or TV screen to remind you to take your daily walk. A note on your car’s dashboard to remind you not to head to the fast food drive-thru!
- 4. Embrace your new, healthier lifestyle – Dieting and losing body fat by making healthy changes should not be just a temporary measure to lose weight. Instead of looking at your new changes as short-term, plan on keeping up most of this healthy lifestyle, even after you have reached your weight loss goals. This will not only help you to keep weight off but will make you healthier and stronger overall.
- 5. Use Weight Loss Tools to Help you Stay on Track of your weight loss.
