Best strategies to maintain to your weight/fat loss
Losing weight can be a challenging journey so when you do reach your goals you want to do your best to keep the weight off and maintain where you are. This can be almost as challenging as losing the weight to begin with though. This is because of many reasons but the biggest reason is because people stop doing the healthy things they were doing when they were trying to lose weight. If you stop exercise, stop focusing on healthy eating and go back to your old habits then the weight is going to come back. Let’s dive into ways that you can maintain your weight/fat loss in the healthiest ways.
Keeping up your exercise: the easiest way to lose all the progress you made is to stop exercising. Once you reach your goals you may adjust your workouts slightly but completely stopping them will cause you to lose muscle and gain fat back over time. The best way to prevent this is to do lifelong sustainable exercise, like finding running/walking paths near where you live, having a set gym schedule each week, adding in fun activities like hiking/biking, getting friends and family involved, and continuing to motivate yourself.
80/20 approach: maintaining weight doesn’t mean that you must give up all your favorite things. The 80/20 approach is the best way to go about this, keeping up with your workouts and healthy lifestyle 80% of the time, and eating your favorite foods and being a little “unhealthy” 20% of the time. This’ll help you stay on track with your goals without giving up your favorite things.
Focus on the long term: Most research shows that long term lifestyle changes are the best way to keep the weight off and they provide the least amount of stress because they are things that you can get in a habit of doing. For example, parking farther away from stores, taking the stairs instead of elevators, incorporating different activities like yoga and hiking into your workouts, involving family members, getting enough sleep, and practicing stress reducing activities. These little changes might not seem like a lot, but when you do them everyday for life they will make a big difference in your weight loss journey.
Stay hydrated: hunger and thirst cues in your brain sometimes get confused, so you may feel hungry when you are thirsty. Staying hydrated all day long will help prevent this, and its good for your overall health. You are less likely to overeat when you are hydrating consistently throughout your day. Aim for 10-12 cups of water per day for women and 12-15 cups of water per day for me. You can also get water from the food you eat including many fruits and vegetables.
Get enough sleep: sleeping is the way that our bodies reset themselves, so a lack of sleep can throw off your hunger cues and cause you to overeat. It will also leave you feeling drained and less likely to go to the gym to work out and you won’t have as much energy when you are working out to complete what you need to do. Try to get at least 8 hours of sleep per night to keep your energy up!
Overall creating long term habits is the best way to maintain your weight/fat loss. Focusing on these tips will make them second nature in no time and you wont even have to think about the healthy things that you do, you will just do them. Over 20% of people who lose weight end up gaining it back, most.
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