The Secret to Long-Term Weight Loss

How to Keep Weight Off Once You Lose It

Losing weight and keeping it off are two totally different battles.

Anybody can lose weight. By following a strict exercise routine and diet plan for a prolonged period of time, the pounds will start to fall off.

If you stick with a weight loss plan for long enough, you’ll eventually get to your goal weight, and have the body you’ve always dreamed of.

Then what? You stop going to the gym all the time. You go back to eating the foods you gave up during your diet. You go back to indulging after months of restriction and dedication to your weight loss goals.

Next thing you know, the scale starts going back up. You notice those new jeans you bought yourself start to get a bit tight. All of your hard work goes undone, and you regain the weight you’ve lost. You may have even gained extra weight on top of where you initially started at.

That’s because losing weight and keeping it off are two very different processes. Losing weight is hard, keeping it off is nearly impossible. In fact, experts suggest as many as 95% of people gain back the weight they lose after following a weight loss program.

Why is Keeping Weight Off So Difficult?

The simple and easy (but not entirely accurate) answer is thar our bodies do not like being in a caloric deficit.

Our metabolism burns energy based on what our bodies are used to needing to survive and function. If we spend months or years at a certain weight, our bodies view that as the “set point.” By starting a new exercise program and restricting our caloric intake, you’re introducing a new challenge for your metabolism. Your body is fighting to maintain its original energy balance; i.e, keeping your bodyweight the same as it was before.

If you’ve spent years overweight, or haven’t exercised regularly for a long period of time, it will take your body’s metabolism a very long time to catch up and maintain your body weight at its new low.

This aspect definitely plays a role in the difficulty of maintaining a low body weight. However, the most accurate reason for why it’s so hard to keep weight you’ve lost off is your own behavior.

Chances are, you lost all that weight because you stuck to a healthy diet and exercised regularly for a long period of time. Maybe you did a crash diet, or took some fat-burner supplements, or stopped drinking water, and that aided in the weight loss journey.

The second you stop doing those things consistently, you’re going to find the weight you’ve lost. Or, more accurately, the weight you’ve lost will find you.

While your metabolism does play a role in regaining lost weight, and that’s out of your control, the biggest reason you’re not keeping weight off is a result of the choices you’re making, and your inability to stick to whatever was working for you in the first place.

So What’s the Secret? How Do You Actually Keep Off the Weight You’ve Lost?

Fortunately, there is one big secret that weight loss gurus, healthcare providers, and supplement companies don’t often share about how to actually keep the weight you’ve lost off.

The secret is really simple to implement, and can be described using only one word:

Consistency

If you’re not consistently performing the healthy habits you did to help you lose weight, you’re not going to keep the weight off long term.

When it comes to losing weight, you need to be in a calorie deficit. A calorie deficit is usually achieved by incorporating some form of healthy diet, regular exercise, and other healthy habits like a good sleep schedule and stress management. Doing these things consistently for a long period of time leads to weight loss.

Say you do these things for six months, and you end up losing 25 pounds, great! Now what if after those six months, you stop exercising regularly, and lose discipline over what you’re eating. Eventually, those pounds come back.

The way to prevent this is simple: don’t stop doing what you did to lose weight.

Your approach will have to shift slightly to maintain your new body weight. You’ll have to enter a maintenance state, where the calories you burn and consume are roughly equal. If you’re continuing to exercise regularly, maintain healthy nutritional habits, and keep your lifestyle to a low degree of stress, you should be able to maintain without much difficulty.

How Do I Be Consistent?

Choose nutrition and exercise habits that you can commit to doing regularly for the rest of your life.

Find a type of exercise you enjoy. Scientifically, the best exercise program is a balance between cardiovascular and strength training. Practically, the best exercise you can do is the type you enjoy enough to do consistently. Find a mode of exercise that you like and do it consistently.

Choose nutritional habits that you enjoy enough to do consistently. If you enjoy keto or intermittent fasting, by all means, do it. If you don’t want to give up bread or pizza or chocolate, don’t: find a way to consume it in your diet (in moderation, most likely). Don’t restrict yourself of foods you enjoy; instead, find a way to incorporate them into your diet.

Surround yourself with people and places that support your healthy habits. The people you spend the most time with will impact the choices you make more than you realize. Explain to your family, friends, spouses, etc, that you are committed to a healthy lifestyle, and foster an environment where you can make sustainable choices.

Of course, there will be times where you have to deviate from your usual habits. Weddings, parties, social gatherings, emergencies, vacations, are all examples of times where you likely won’t stick to your usual diet and exercise habits. That’s okay. Enjoy those occasions, and get back on track when life returns back to normal.

Bottomline

Losing weight is hard; keeping it off is harder. It takes months and years of hard work and dedication to healthy habits in order to lose weight. The same can be said for keeping weight off, that’s why so many people struggle to do so.

The secret to keeping weight off is consistency. Whichever choices you made, and habits you adopted, to help you lose weight in the first place, will be the same choices and habits you’ll rely on to keep it off for the long term.

Choose exercise and nutritional habits you can commit to for the rest of your life. It will make the process more enjoyable and (most importantly) sustainable.

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