You’ve reached your goal weight, and you look and feel better than you have in years. Now comes the hard part—you have to keep the weight off. There’s no magic to it.
It involves the same strategies you used to lose the weight in the first place: watching your diet, exercising, and planning ahead.
Stick to Your Diet Plan
You know that if you go back to your old eating habits, your weight will start creeping up again. Allow yourself a day of celebration—you deserve it—but then get right back to following your diet plan. You have created a new lifestyle for yourself, and your eating plan needs to be lived every day.
Although you should be able to adjust your diet to allow more calories, you’ll still need to carefully track everything that you consume. Tracking will also help you maintain a good balance between protein and healthy fats and carbs.
Do Cardio Exercises
Regular cardio exercise will help you burn calories and keep your body’s metabolism functioning at optimal levels. You need about 150 minutes per week of cardio for best results. That translates into 30 minutes, five days a week.
You’ll be more committed to cardio if you choose an activity you love to do, such as bicycling or swimming. Swimming helps you work out several major muscle groups. Building muscle tone energizes your metabolism and helps your body burn calories more efficiently.
Plan Ahead
If you want to maintain a healthy weight for the rest of your life, you need to plan ahead for special occasions. You don’t want to deprive yourself of your grandma’s holiday pies or dad’s summer rib barbecue. But you also don’t want to suffer a setback that will send you into a weight-gain spiral.
Before the big day, plan a week where you eat fewer calories each day. This strategy of calorie cycling will help balance out those special times when you’re facing social pressures and it’s harder to control your intake. Besides, grandma’s pumpkin pie is awesome, and you don’t want to pass it up.
It’ll take some discipline and commitment to maintain your weight loss, but you have already demonstrated you have what it takes. Reaching your goal weight is an outstanding achievement. Now, keep up the great work, and you’ll be living a healthy lifestyle from this day forward.
Did you enjoy reading this article? Here’s more to read. How Exercise Can Do Wonders for Your Health
