So, you’d started your weight loss journey, you ate a balanced diet and gradually after consistently working hard, you’ve lost the desired weight and now you’re in good shape.
Now, what to do from here? How can you maintain that shape and not regain the weight you’ve lost? That’s what I am going to elucidate in this blog.
We all know weight loss is notoriously difficult to maintain. Many researches have found that most people end up regaining what they’d lost, and sometimes more.
WHY? Here are some reasons
- You bereft yourself of food: Maybe, you’d followed a very rigid and typical “1200 calories diet” which bereft you of all of your favorite foods. You may’ve achieved you goal of fat loss with that but in the process, you wrecked your relation with the food. Eventually after starving yourself, your taste hormones kicked in and you pig on every food item favorite of yours, regaining the weight you’d lost. I already elucidated this food behavior in my blog, check it out.
- Not tracking food: Some fellas halt tracking calories after weight loss and end up eating more than they should on regular basis. This also eventuates in regaining weight.
- When you reduce calories and your body shrinks, your metabolism(capability of our body to breakdown the food and transform into energy) eventually slows. That means you must cut more calories to keep fat loss going. And all too often, by the time someone reaches their goal, the amount of calories they can eat to maintain their weight, doesn’t translate to a lot of food. As a result, additional calories crawl back in and weight on scale starts to rise.
How to not regain weight?
- Lose weight using IIFYCM approach: I’ve explained this concept in my previous blogs “good foods bad foods” and “let’s calculate your maintenance calories”. Check them out.
- Reverse dieting: It is a method that involves gradual and strategic increase in daily food intake, all in effort to raise your metabolism. Precision nutrition has posted a detailed and gem of article on this topic. Check it out.
- Track calories consistently
- Eat at maintenance calories: I’ve posted a blog on this topic, check it out here. Additionally, there’s a very good article by InbodyUSA on how muscle mass affects your BMR and maintenance calories. They took the example of two individuals having same weight, age and activity levels but different body composition. Individual A has more muscle mass than Individual B. They found that individual A has greater metabolism than individual B. Check it out also.
- Needless to say, exercise consistently
That’s all about today’s blog. See you all in my next blog. Till then, stay healthy, keep exercising and be benevolent towards others.
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Fitness Aficionado 