Top ten weight maintenance tips
A lot is written on the internet about weight loss and relatively little about weight maintenance. If you view any internet forums, you may see twenty boards about various diets, and then one board for weight maintenance. However weight maintenance is the most important part of the journey! If you don’t focus on it then slowly and surely you will end up where you started. Many people who diet end up regaining the weight that they lost, and that says to me that the emphasis of a weight loss journey should be to show someone how to build healthy habits to keep their weight off for life.
So with that in mind, here are my top ten tips for keeping the weight off:
- Weigh yourself weekly, and set yourself a goal weight range covering 7 pounds. When you get near the top end of the range, start keeping a food diary to work out where you might be letting unhealthy habits creep in again.
- Exercise – it doesn’t have to be anything fancy but it must be regular. Even if all you do is take a walk for 20 minutes 5 days a week, something is always better than nothing, and the consistency of doing of exercise will keep your weight down.
- Try out healthy new recipes or new foods for lunch or dinner to keep an interest in healthy food. I like to try and do one new recipe every week if possible.
- Take a packed lunch to work so that you can control what’s in it. Do not buy extra food in your lunch hour to supplement the meal!
- If you know you are going to eat a lot one day, for example if you have a social occasion coming up, plan out the following days menu in advance and keep it light, and include lots of fruit and vegetables.
- Avoid unexpected unhealthy snacks that people offer you by politely saying, “No thanks, I’ve just eaten”, or “No thanks, I’m full”. Don’t say that you are trying to be healthy or they may try and sabotage your intentions by insisting you eat the snack.
- Try not to drink your calorie allowance. Generally I stick to water and tea for drinks, with a glass of wine in the evening. I rarely drink soft drinks, and if I have fruit juice or milk I try to include them as part of a meal, normally breakfast.
- Try and stick to home cooking. There may be extra calories in supermarket ready meals and restaurant food that you don’t need.
- Always watch your portion size. Remember if you are still hungry after you have finished you can always have more food, but if you serve too large a portion up in the first place you are more likely to eat it anyway if its there on your plate.
- Try to plan in advance what you will eat the next day for meals and snacks because then you are more likely to stick to it, and less likely to eat unhealthy food you didn’t plan for. Its useful to try and plan a week at a time, although at the very least just planning the next day is helpful.
What are your top tips for weight maintenance?