How to keep excess weight off your body
One of the most important things that you must do after you’ve finished your fat loss plan is move into successful maintenance. Really, a diet is not successful unless it allows you to keep the weight off that you’ve lost for good. Otherwise, you just found a temporary fix to a long-term problem.
Many people do often struggle with maintenance which is why they find themselves back in the diet seat shortly after they come off their diet plan.
Fortunately, with a few key tricks you can succeed with maintaining your new body and enjoy all the hard work that you put in.
Let’s have a quick peak at some of the top maintenance tips to remember.
Keep A Tight Weight Range
The very first thing that successful maintainers do is set a narrow weight range that they will allow themselves to fluctuate between. For instance, if your goal weight is 125 pounds, you might only let yourself get up to 128 before you start taking action.
Remember, it’s far easier to shed 3 pounds of weight gained with a few simple diet modifications than it is to shed 20 that you’ve let yourself gain back.
As soon as you see yourself creeping upwards, take action and tighten up your diet or a week. It’ll be gone in no time.
Diet During The Week
The second thing that you might consider to help you with maintenance is to maintain a lower calorie intake during the week. What this does is creates a mini-calorie deficit that you can then use during the weekend when you are more social and the chances of you consuming more calories are greater.
Since most people do struggle with the weekends a lot more than weekdays, this gives you some leeway for going out to social functions or just treating yourself to something that you desire.
Maintain Your Exercise Levels
Another key thing for successful maintenance is making sure that you maintain your exercise levels. Exercise is one of the biggest factors that will predict long-term weight maintenance so stick with that workout program.
This will help you maintain a higher metabolic rate overall to prevent fat gain and also help you maintain lean muscle mass, which naturally burns more calories all day long.
Indulge Once Per Day
Finally, if you decide that you do need to treat yourself on any given day, make sure that you limit yourself to just one treat per day. If you let yourself get too out of control and are treating here and there all day long, it will add up to weight gain.
If you’re craving chocolate, have a small piece, enjoy it, and then put the box away. A 100 calorie treat really won’t have much influence on your weight but six or seven of them will. Remember that and you’ll keep yourself in check.
So there you have the top things to note for successful maintenance. If you work hard at it and make sure you keep yourself accountable, you can maintain your new body for years to come.