You’ve heard the stats – most people who lose weight regain it. But why? Largely, it’s because weight loss is very different than weight maintenance.
In this article, we’ll talk about both the differences, as well as what makes people successful at maintaining weight loss in the long term.
Original source: here.
The Psychology of Weight Loss vs. Weight Maintenance
Weight loss is motivating. You see progress. The scale shows continually lower numbers. Your waist size gets smaller. If you use a belt, you can tighten that belt by one more notch. Your dress size gets smaller. People give you compliments.
Progress is fun. But progress doesn’t last forever. Eventually, you reach your ideal weight. Nobody gets to zero pounds.
Eventually, you transition from weight loss to weight maintenance. A different word for maintenance is stagnation. That’s no fun.
For a lot of people, a hidden psychological reason for regaining the weight that they lost is to be able to go through that journey multiple times. Sometimes, if they don’t feel successful in other areas of their life (career, finances, relationships, etc.), they know their own blueprint for success at weight loss.
To paraphrase Mark Twain, “losing weight is easy. I’ve done it dozens of times.”
How to Maintain Weight Loss
If you can’t lose weight forever, what does it take to maintain your weight loss? People who maintain their weight loss successfully in the long term (beyond 5 years) use a few different strategies:
Strategy #1: Set Different Goals
Weight loss is a goal. But eventually you reach that goal. After that, you need to set a new fitness goal that’s not related to your weight. Find something that you find interesting. Set a goal of running a 5K race. Or entering a powerlifting competition. Or joining a dragon boat team. Or anything fitness-related that isn’t about your weight. It’s fun to chase goals. But once you’ve reached your ideal weight, you can’t really get better than “ideal.” So find a new goal to chase.
Strategy #2: Find an Activity That’s Enjoyable to You for Its Own Sake
What’s something you love doing, regardless of any health/fitness benefit? For me, I really like martial arts and tennis. Even though it’s tiring, I could do it for hours. I don’t care about the cardio and strength benefits of it (I can get that through other means). It’s just fun beating an opponent. It feels like a chess match.
What’s something that you enjoy or would enjoy, regardless of any fitness benefit? Do you like dancing? Hiking? Dragon boating? Yoga? Pilates?
Find some kind of physical activity, even if it’s not difficult, but is enjoyable enough that you could do it 4+ days per week, just because you like it.
Strategy #3: Establish Guardrails
People who successfully maintain their weight in the long-term have some kind of measurement to let them know when they’re getting too far off track. The most common one is simply weighing yourself at a regular frequency. No, the scale doesn’t have the greatest accuracy, and no, it doesn’t distinguish between muscle and fat, but, if you’re gaining weight, and you know it’s not muscle, you then have a predetermined series of steps that you take to bring your weight back down.
Weighing yourself is just one example of a guardrail, but there could be others. I like objective, accurate measurements, so with clients, I use body fat testing, which does distinguish between muscle and fat. But not everyone has access to accurate body fat testing.
Other examples of guardrails are how your clothes fit (though you can gain quite a bit of weight before your clothes get tight), how tight is your belt, etc.
So there are 2 keys here:
- Find regular guardrails.
- Before you hit the guardrails, have a predetermined plan of what would happen if you hit those guardrails.
While I was never overweight, even I have guardrails. Generally speaking, I feel good when my weight is in the 143–145-pound range. Once it creeps up to 146-147, I simply start skipping meals. Not because I restrict, but simply because I’m so full, I don’t feel like eating. That’s just my strategy, and it works for me. But there are a million different strategies, so the key is to simply come up with one that works for you.
It may take some trial and error. But think of one strategy, and that’s it. Once you hit the guardrails, deploy that strategy, and evaluate whether it works or not. If it does, awesome. If it doesn’t, no big deal. Come up with a new strategy.
Strategy #4: Get a Personal Trainer
Obviously, I’m biased here. After all, I’m a personal trainer, and I run a personal training company.
Lots of people hire personal trainers for one simple reason: they know that exercise is good for them, but they hate it. They might like walking and swimming, but they know that it’s not enough. They don’t like strength training. But it’s good for them.
So they hire a personal trainer to have someone to be accountable to. As a bonus, they get safety and effectiveness.
If you need help either losing weight or maintaining it, just fill out the application form on our home page. It doesn’t obligate you to anything. All it does is it starts a conversation. There’s no pressure, sales tactics or obligation.
