You’ve jumped through hoops and bent over backwards (literally!) to lose the weight, and now that it’s gone you certainly want to keep it off. You followed a weight loss plan to lose the weight, but where’s the follow-up plan to help you keep the weight off? Prevent the weight from creeping back and maintain your weight loss with these tricks.
Write it Down
During your dieting and weight loss days, you probably kept a food journal and kept track of progress and wrote down goals you wanted to reach. Continue to write in the food journal after you have reached your ideal weight. Writing down what you eat helps keep track of any potential problematic eating patterns and written future goals will help keep you motivated to eat healthy.
Get Rid of Oversized Clothes
Get rid of all your fat clothes immediately. Do not bag them up for a future yard sale, give them away immediately. Literally having nothing to wear if you gain five pounds is a huge motivator to stay the course and eat healthy.
Plan Four Yearly Events
Plan four yearly events, one every three months, that will require you to be at your best physically. Plan a weekend beach vacation that will require you to wear a bathing suit, then three months later plan to participate in a 5k run and follow that up in three months with planning to see an old friend who hasn’t seen you since you’ve lost weight. Those planned events that come around every three months will help you maintain the weight loss.
Challenge Yourself
Don’t stop challenging yourself after you’ve reached your ideal weight, keep the challenge going. Walk a little farther or faster each week, lift a little more weight or learn a new exercise routine. Learn a new sport and get a friend involved for motivation.
Challenging yourself with new things will also prevent boredom mentally and physically. If you get bored mentally with an exercise routine, you’ll be more prone to skip the workout. When muscles are not challenged and go through the same pace with each workout, they become bored and the weight can begin to slowly creep back on since nothing new is being done to burn more calories.
The food you eat needs to have a little variety too. Challenge yourself to try one new healthy recipe each week, or at least one new healthy food item each week to prevent food boredom that could lead to an eating binge.