Maintaining your weight loss is a continuous effort but it should not be painful or torturing. It should come with a real understanding of how the body works, how food works, what difference our lifestyle makes, and so on.
It is also a matter of changes and habits. What seems impossible now may become a pleasant habit later. This is because the human capacity has the power to reset and to heal itself.
An individual becomes a smoker after enough cigarettes have been smoked – enough to cause the addiction. Once he’s decided to quit, there needs to be a certain amount of time without any cigarette in order to get rid of the noxious habit.
This involves detoxing the system and ‘erasing’ the memory of smoking. A similar principle applies to losing unhealthy weight in excess and ‘resetting’ the body to manage nutrients more effectively.
Below you have 20 proven tips that allow you to maintain a healthy weight after you slimmed down and stopped dieting.
1. Do the diet for long enough
Research any diet you are interested in and know its ideal length. Rapid slimming diets are highly restrictive and dangerous, these should not be done for more than one week approximately. These aren’t the best either.
Opt for a more lengthy method, to make sure you’re not developing deficiencies and putting your health at risk. Then, stick to that diet for as long as it takes.
You need to create new habits and habits take time to form. Your body needs to ‘unlearn’ the wring way of feeding and ‘learn’ the new, healthier ones.
2. Eat small meals often
Regardless of the diet, you adopted for losing weight, you should make this a habit: eat small meals often. This is the way to boost your metabolism and burn fat naturally.
When you do the opposite, you signal your body to slow down, so it burns less calories.
Eating often hastens the digestive process. The body no longer has so much time to store the excess but will flush it out and prepare for the next meal. This habit also keeps your metabolism going instead of slowing down.
3. Keep on exercising often
There is no way around it – a fit body is achieved through working out. Physical activity increases your metabolism, burns calories, helps move your blood and lymph. When done regularly, it can turn one into a fat-burning machine.
Half an hour of moderate activity per day would be great. Do some research and find out the best type for you. It may be cardio or maybe strength training. Your best adviser would be a physician who knows your medical history and not a personal fitness trainer.
4. Eating a good breakfast, day by day
You don’t have to indulge in Full English to give your body what it needs for the day. Just get good quality protein in the morning. It’s the macronutrient that builds muscle and busts fat, feeding you for many hours to come.
Never skip breakfast because that doesn’t help you lose weight. On the contrary, it slows down the metabolism.
If you have cereal, you’re getting loads of carbs, that may energize you for the time being but won’t have the same benefits. You’ll soon be willing to snack some more and this is something that surely makes it hard to keep your weight in check.
5. Be aware of your fat requirements
Fat represents another vital macronutrient. It is simply essential for our bodies to function. Not all fat is getting stored as adipose tissue. The good types, such as those found in nuts, seeds, yogurt, avocado, and certain oils, are totally beneficial to health in moderate amounts.
What you need to avoid is margarine and fried foods, as well as animal fat. When you’re not getting enough good fat, your body will be craving it, thus possibly making you eat heaps of bad food (fried, nuggets, chips, doughnuts, etc.).
6. Train your muscles
Weight lifting isn’t only for those who want to have a bodybuilder’s ripped physique. The more muscular fiber you gain, the less fat you’re going to have.
Therefore, make it a habit to train with weight on a regular basis. Work out all your muscle groups and hit the gym twice a week.
7. Be kind to yourself
No need to follow a draconian regime to keep the weight off. You may allow yourself one ‘cheat meal’ or even ‘cheat day’ every now and then.
As long as it’s not too often, you may indulge in whichever foods you like. If you find your cravings hard to control, allow yourself to taste the foods you fancy. Just limit the amount to a small quantity.
The more stress you put on yourself, the harder it will be to avoid gaining weight.
8. Learn to manage your stress well
If you haven’t done it by now, you must begin to learn about what causes stress in your life and what you can do to manage it. Stress causes cortisol to rise and that leads to fat accumulation, especially inside and around your belly.
Whether you lower it by meditation, through therapy, walks in nature, music, or artistic activities, it’s going to prevent you from binge eating. In general, emotions must be under control, because anger, sadness, frustration, disappointment, and so on can make you find a reward in food.
9. Never ignore the fiber
To most people, it is unclear what fiber does. What they know is that it helps relieve constipation. Fiber acts on the water inside our bodies.
It takes out the excess, thus helping you keep the pounds off. Always make sure to get loads of it, especially from fresh vegetables and during breakfast.
10. Avoid refined carbs
Refined carbohydrates are abundant in white bread, bagels and so on. During digestion, these get turned into sugars, which leads to an insulin spike. That is a dangerous reaction, not only because of the health problems it can generate, but also because it prompts fat storage.
11. Don’t run to alcohol for comfort
It may sound like something that alcoholics do, but even regular people often have a drink to chase their blues away, to diminish anxiety, fight a bad mood, etc. so many don’t realize it’s become a habit.
Before an addiction is created, you’re packing pounds. Alcohol is basically like fuel, as it has loads of calories. Besides, studies show that a drink before a meal makes you eat an average of 200 additional calories.
And while your liver does its best trying to process the alcohol, the digestive system leaves its work for later. In the meanwhile, food gets stored as fat.
12. Eat spicy
This does not refer to having an Indian curry dish a few times a week. Make it consciously – add spices to your dishes on a daily basis, you’ll soon enjoy it greatly. Hot peppers and similar spices increase the resting metabolic rate. Plus, spices can make you feel full sooner.
13. Drink enough water
If you drink water especially before meals, you will eat with 13% less. Besides that, water has a complex role in your metabolism. It can lead to an increase in the amount of calories you burn daily.
14. Don’t go at it alone
Just like dieting and exercising is easier with a friend, so is the consequent weight maintenance effort. You need some kind of support system, otherwise, you may fall back on your old habits.
Perhaps there is a friend who may already have or be willing to adopt a similar lifestyle and keep you motivated. Or, they may be able to keep you on track by constantly reminding you of the healthy choices. Adequate support makes it much easier to maintain a healthy weight.
15. Consistency and routine instead of a rollercoaster
So many people go on and off diets, moving from a period of indulgence to deprivation. It’s like a rollercoaster and it usually makes them put the weight back on, only to desperately want to slim down again, through another tough method.
It’s best if you adopt a lighter diet that feels easier on you and stay consistent through and through. Make changes you can handle and stick with them for the long run. There is no need to torture yourself with extreme diets or schedules.
16. Always eat slowly
Eating too fast is a common cause of ingesting far too many calories. Take your time to practice ‘mindful eating’ – a practice that slows you down. Thus, your brain has enough time to receive the signals of satiation.
Apart from that, you get to chew food better, so you can maximize the amount of nutrients as you eat less.
17. Cater to your gut health
To stop accumulating excessive fat, you need to fix your gut, so that it digests food correctly and doesn’t leak substances into your blood. The bacteria naturally present in the gut has a vital role but sadly it can be damaged by our eating habits.
Probiotics can restore it, however. Once you do this, it becomes easier to exercise and feel good, because the gut influences your energy and mood. Yogurt and kefir are ideal for gut flora repair and so are sauerkraut and various types of fermented pickles.
18. Keep your stomach acid levels in check
This is such a frequently overlooked matter. Your stomach acid is responsible, for breaking down the food and when you don’t have enough of it, it all goes downhill.
The reality is that too many doctors prescribe antacids to patients, to prevent acid reflux. This can seriously hamper your protein digestion process, which is crucial to a normal weight.
19. Stay aware
As mentioned, a good diet is a constant effort to develop and keep healthier habits. Setbacks may happen. You go on a holiday and you forget about proper eating habits or you don’t have other options but junk food.
That’s alright, if you strayed from the norm for several days, you can still get back on track and make better choices.
A wrong step doesn’t mean you’re doomed. It happens to anyone and it should not make you abort the mission. There will be a next day and another and another one, so you can make the right choices.
20. Learn to be in charge
Learn to say no to bad foods being offered to you and, most important, learn how to cook at home. It is imperative to get in charge of your own life and stop depending on readily made supermarket food, on restaurants, or fast food establishments.
When you pick the right ingredients and cook them in healthy ways (by boiling, steaming, grilling, baking), then you know for sure what’s in your plate.
You can choose not to have the extras that may add heaps of calories. There will be no hidden sodium, fats, or sugar in your meals. Being in control is truly empowering and you’ll feel much more satisfied with your life.
To save time, you can cook larger quantities at once and store them in the fridge.
On a final note, it matters how you view dieting when you want to maintain a certain weight for as long as possible. Instead of a quick fix, see it in a different light. Dieting is not supposed to be a painful or annoying restriction concerning everything you like.
It’s not something to engage in when you notice your weight is out of control again. It’s about making smart changes and still feeding yourself well. It is supposed to feel right. When your mindset becomes the correct one, you’ll find these endeavors to be much more pleasant and effective.