How Do You Maintain Weight Loss?
Q: When you’ve been on a diet for a while and are almost at your goal weight, what should you do after you reach it? How do you maintain weight loss? That’s assuming, of course, that you don’t want to go through the entire weight loss process again, which would be preposterous — PREPOSTEROUS!!! — because losing weight is soooooooooooo much fun with shit like dealing with constant hunger and cravings and having to navigate social situations where food is abundant while having the self-control of a monk. Yeah, it’s a fucking blast!
A: Most diets are successful at helping to lose weight but they’re not as successful at resulting in long-term weight loss. In fact, conservative estimates suggest that 80 percent of people who lose a significant amount of weight regain it and sometimes even more. The main reason for this is because weight loss triggers compensatory mechanisms, some of which include slowing down the resting metabolic rate, or how fast the body burns calories, and adjustments to several appetite-regulating hormones that elevate hunger and reduce the feeling of fullness.
Regaining weight after losing it is a common occurrence because of increased appetite and the metabolism not burning calories from food as quickly, both of which, according to set point theory, are counteractive measures to restore body weight to its preferred level. All of that is largely beyond our control. There are, however, things that are within our ability to change that also contribute to the ease that weight gets regained.
Adjustments to the metabolism and appetite can bring about the return of lost weight after losing it but what also doesn’t help is that people usually revert to their old habits that were responsible for their initial weight gain. The most classic example of this is the resumption of overeating upon completion of a diet, as people often go back to immediately taking in more calories than are necessary to maintain their body weight.
While a calorie deficit should give way to a higher calorie intake once weight loss is achieved, that intake shouldn’t be so high that it’s actually a calorie surplus. So what should be done to maintain weight loss is to calculate the total daily calories that you have to consume to stay at your new weight like was done to lose it. From there, you can transition from weight loss into maintenance by going straight to consuming the requisite amount of calories that have to be added to your daily diet to satisfy the target or gradually increase your calories over the course of several days or weeks until your total intake is at maintenance levels.1One method isn’t significantly better than the other, so it comes down to personal preference.
Not being as mindful of food intake is a mistake that’s commonly made once goal weight is reached and it’s something to avoid doing in prevention of regaining lost weight. Another error is stopping physical activity or not engaging in it. Although exercise doesn’t play a large role in weight loss and the process can occur just as effectively without it, regular physical activity is vital for keeping weight off. The importance of exercise lies in its ability to burn extra calories during its performance and the building of muscle with strength training in particular helps increase the metabolism so the body burns calories when it’s not doing anything. So to maintain weight loss, your weekly workout schedule should consist of 2-3 days of weightlifting and 150 minutes of moderate cardio or 75 minutes at a vigorous intensity.
Exercising and eating the appropriate amount of calories are the two most important things you can do to keep weight off after losing it, in addition to practicing a variety of dietary interventions, such as eating breakfast, including protein and fiber in every meal, and following a consistent feeding schedule, as well as having a support system of family and friends and self-monitoring weight via progress photos, circumference measurements, and daily or weekly scale readings.
Weight loss is a blast, so it would be crazy to want to keep weight off after losing it. Were that to happen, then any of the number of pleasurable activities associated with dieting to get excess weight off would be missed out on. It’s hard to imagine that someone would deprive themselves of that much fun. But supposing that someone were inclined to not want to go through the weight loss process again and again, then what they could do is any of the provided in that hypothetical scenario that strains the bounds of possibility.
Now, does anyone else have a fitness or nutrition question of their own that they want to ask?
Glossary: caloric deficit, calories, cardio, diet, exercise, fitness, food, hormones, intensity, metabolism, muscle, nutrition, workout
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