Keeping Weight Off is Impossible Without This Key Diet Step
We’ve all been there…
You’re super focused on taking the weight off. Your mind is always thinking about what to eat, when to eat it, what workouts to do, what the scale says, etc. All with the end in mind.
The day you button up your favorite jeans and they fit like a glove. Feeling amazing on the vacation you’re getting ready to take. The day you see the magical number on the scale that you equate to being in shape again.
The only problem is that we spend all of our mental energy planning and scheming how to get the weight off, with no thought as to how to keep it off. We don’t have a weight loss problem, we have a regain problem.
People lose weight all the time, there’s a $71 billion weight loss industry helping them do it. Yet, as a nation, we are growing larger and larger over time instead of getting smaller.
What gives?
Most weight loss efforts are short sited with little to no focus on maintenance! If you don’t want to keep fighting the same pounds year after year, you’ve gotta do something different than what everyone else is doing. Because they’re all putting it back on. And you’ve got to do something different than everything that’s “worked” for you in the past. Because, if you’re reading this blog, you probably put it back on too.
A weight loss plan that doesn’t help you keep the weight off isn’t truly successful. Taking weight off shouldn’t be the ONLY goal, keeping it off should be part of the plan FROM THE BEGINNING.
We need to approach weight loss with the end in mind! An end that looks something like losing weight, feeling really good, and having a food life we enjoy that is not obsessed with the scale or dieting.
If you…
>>> have lost the weight only to regain it again
>>> are addicted to dieting
>>> have no idea how to keep weight off long term
then this post is for you sister.
Transitioning from the weight loss phase to the maintenance phase is the key to keeping weight off for good!
In this post, we will tackle why we regain weight after a diet and what we can do differently this time. So, we can keep our hard-earned results and get off the rollercoaster.
How come I can lose weight, but I can’t keep it off?
We’re spending $71 billion to lose weight, but it’s said that less than 20% of people who lose weight will keep it off for one year. What?!?!? Losing weight is a lot of work to only keep your accomplishment locked down for 1 stinking year.
What’s worse is that many people who gain back the weight don’t just gain what they lost, they gain more! So, we’re dieting our weight down, only to rebound weight gain more than what we lost. I have personally experienced this, maybe you have too.
There are multiple reasons why we regain weight and knowing what they are is the first step in breaking the cycle. Here are a few possible reasons we’re putting it back on that we can discuss real quick.
>>> Short term thinking
>>> Mental burnout from the diet
>>> Physiological changes that make our body primed to regain fat
Short term thinking:
To keep weight off forever, we must make changes to our daily habits - forever. We cannot lose weight and go right back to what we were doing before. Because what we were doing before was leading to weight gain. And that’s what we say we don’t want.
That seems to make sense when you think it through. But how many times have you personally said, or heard someone else say, “That diet doesn’t work” after they lose weight and then regain it?
Does the diet not work? Or did we lose weight on the diet but then go right back to our old habits? We hit the magical number we wanted to see on the scale and think “Aha, I have arrived”. Then we go right back to the Standard American Diet (SAD) and blame the weight loss diet for not working. This makes no sense at all.
Think of the Standard American diet as the ultimate weight gain diet. It is a diet, and it has a purpose. And the purpose is to pack on the pounds as quickly as possible. If you’re trying to gain weight, it’s the diet for you.
However, if you’re trying to keep weight off or to lose weight, it’s the worst possible diet you could be on. If you have no interest in gaining weight, this should never be the diet of choice for you. And make no mistake about it, every human being is on some sort of diet, whether they are aware of it and putting thought into it or not.
We are all consuming food, and that food is influencing our health and our weight, for better or for worse. This is happening regardless of if we’re eating on autopilot or if we’re planning what our diet looks like. Most of the time after a diet, we quit the diet and go back to autopilot. And autopilot for most of us IS the SAD diet. Hence, the weight comes back.
Does this mean we have to be on some strict diet forever to keep weight off? No! Absolutely not.
But it does mean we have to find a way of eating that satisfies us but also keeps the fat away. This is how we roll into a maintenance phase. This is a diet in itself, it’s just a less strict diet. It still takes discipline and a plan. But once you get the kinks worked out, it slowly becomes your new way of life.
Side note: This is why I love losing weight with the focus on clean eating and not dieting per se. Yes, switching to clean eating is still technically a diet. But it has a focus on eating foods that are healthy for our body.
Oftentimes weight naturally comes off without counting anything or feeling super restrictive. And the best part is that it’s a diet you can stick with 80% of the time for life. So it kind of takes the maintenance phase talk right out of the equation.
With a less strict - clean eating focus, you’re losing weight in a way you can continue for life. It is loss and maintenance all rolled into one. That being said, sometimes a more strict diet is required, so let’s continue with the maintenance talk.
When shifting your focus on a maintenance phase, you’re not loosening all the way back to the SAD diet, but you’re not super strict anymore either; like always weighing and tracking food, or eliminating entire food groups. It’s really a balancing act and it’s one that you can get really good at, but that balance is sometimes hard to find when you first start.
You can still go out to dinner with your girlfriends and have ice cream with your little people. But what you cannot do, is fall back into your old habits that led to all the weight gain in the first place. Or your amazingly effective Standard American Diet will strike again!
Mental burnout:
Why do we lose weight on a diet and then go right back to old habits? Because dieting is hard, I don’t care what anyone says. It’s doable and it can even be fun at times. But it takes a lot of mental energy and thought and quite frankly, we get sick of doing it.
A lifetime of eating junk and vegging on the couch doesn’t just vanish as your default setting once you’ve hit your goals. You now have the beginning of good habits. Those new neuropathways are being laid down in your mind that can lead to lasting change when we continue to reinforce them. But we can still fall back into old habits pretty easily, especially when we’ve taken our eye off the prize because the goal has been met. Or when we’re stressed, busy, or burnt out.
There are ways to combat this mental burnout along the way that we’ll get into in a minute. But being aware of it and planning accordingly is a must if we’re going to keep up the good habits we’ve started to develop.
Physiological changes (defense mechanisms):
After we’ve lost weight, our body is screaming to regain it! Ugh, that’s annoying but we’ve got to deal with it.
I won’t get into a big biochem lesson on this, it’s above my pay grade. But you can certainly pick up one of many great books about metabolism if this is interesting to you and I’ll link to a good article below.
The gist is this…
When we lose weight, a few things happen in our bodies that prime us to put the weight back on. Our energy needs go down as our weight goes down. Meaning, we need less food to maintain where we’re at.
Plus, our hormones that regulate appetite get a little wonky and we can start to feel pretty darn hungry. This effect might be heightened if we lose weight really fast or in a huge caloric deficit. So, after a long diet or an aggressive diet, we may truly feel like a hungry little monster.
On top of the decrease energy needs and increase in appetite, our bodies become more efficient with their energy supply…aka we aren’t burning through our calories as quickly as we normally would.
Now, something that makes this critical phase of your dieting extra important is this fun little tidbit…
Usually, when we gain weight we’re not actually gaining more fat cells, it’s just that our existing fat cells are growing. When we lose weight, we don’t lose fat cells, our fat cells shrink. There is now some evidence to suggest that immediately after a fat loss phase, we can actually create more fat cells. You can learn more about this potential effect and get an in-depth look at what’s happening hormonally in this paper.
Gaining extra fat cells, instead of just beefing up the existing ones, could lead to gaining even more weight. Some are speculating that this may in part explain why people who lose weight tend to gain back more than what they lost. It may even make subsequent weight loss harder each time we gain and lose and gain and lose.
Great, we lose weight, and our body is trying to sabotage us once we hit our goals. What the hell kind of sense does this make?
Well, fat is energy, and energy is survival. That is, when you don’t have an overabundance of food like we currently do. So, it makes sense that our bodies will want to hold onto it, and even try and bring it back when we’ve lost it.
Keep in mind I just gave you a 60-foot overview of a super complicated biological defense mechanism. In fact, it’s so complex, even the scientists studying weight loss and metabolism don’t have it all figured out yet. So don’t get hung up on any of the details.
The takeaway here is that your body will be primed to regain the weight after you lose it. So, to keep it off we can’t take our foot off the gas just yet! You drop your weight, your body screams “Hey I’m hungry” and slows things down a bit. So we need to stay persistent here.
Does this mean you’re doomed? Absolutely not. It just means you can’t take your eye off the prize once the goal is met, there’s still more focus required.
It’ll be less work because maintaining requires less work. But equal intention and focus are needed here because your body is primed to regain right now. Plus, your habits aren’t yet set in stone yet, even though they’ve come a long way.
How Do I Keep The Weight Off?
We’ve done the work, we’ve lost the weight. How do we keep our leaner body we worked so hard for?
Start with the end in mind. Do not wait until you hit your goals, or are really close to them, to start thinking maintenance. Build maintenance right into your plan.
Side note: Many women find they lose weight naturally when switching to a whole food diet, getting better sleep, managing stress, and adding in exercise. If you did this to lose weight, just keep going! You are living in your maintenance phase already. It’s a beautiful thing.
If you were pretty strict with your clean eating and you’d like to loosen the reigns a bit, try that out and monitor how your weight responds. For instance, if you had been pretty low carb, try adding in some good slow-burning carbs like sweet potatoes or even some fruit.
If you were strict paleo, add in a food group you’re missing like beans, grains, or dairy (1 at a time of course), and see how your body responds.
Another popular approach is to keep it clean 80% of the time and allow yourself some guilt-free liberties 20% of the time, or ad-lib as long as you’re not reverting all the way back to poor eating habits.
There is no cookie-cutter answer to maintenance, but again it’s about finding that balance between enjoying your food choices and your life but keeping the weight off.
Now, if you were really focused and were tracking and counting and cutting calories and the like, you may need a more focused transition. Here are a few tips.
I am by no means an expert on this. Oh heck, I don’t think anyone has the perfect answers for this stuff figured out if I’m being honest. But I want to get your wheels turning with a few ideas. Incorporate what seems helpful for your specific situation and ignore the rest.
If none of it seems fitting, maybe it’ll at least be a good brainstorming activity to read these and you’ll come up with something all on your own. Like all things weight loss, play with it and make it yours! What works for one won’t work for all.
>>> Be ok losing slow and steady
There is some thought that less aggressive measures to weight loss don’t fire off those defense mechanisms as hard as an aggressive or very long diet. By being ok with slow and steady weight loss, maybe we don’t trigger all of that quite so much and maintenance is a little easier. Plus, we don’t feel as deprived so we’re less likely to binge, making our efforts easier but also more sustainable.
(There will be times when weight is truly affecting health and rapid weight loss is needed. At this point, you should be working with your doctor. Obviously, go as fast as they want you to).
>>> Take diet breaks
Diet breaks are just how they sound, taking a break from your diet. Now, a diet break doesn’t mean a binge. It just means that if you’re really cutting back on something, like calories or carbs, you bring your numbers back up to what would be close to maintenance for you.
So you’re not gaining a bunch of weight and going crazy with your food, you’re just not losing at this time either. Or at least, not trying to. Think of it as a little mini-maintenance phase practice round.
The studies on diet breaks are a mixed bag. Initially, it was thought that a weekly cheat meal would stop the defense mechanisms we talked about above from happening. (Excessive hunger brought on by hormonal changes, slower metabolism). Then it looked like you actually need a break for a couple of days and that it was important to get most of your calorie increase from carbs in order to protect against these wonky metabolic changes.
Now we have some information that looks like diet breaks need to be quite long in order to have a positive effect on those hormonal changes, and some research that shows they don’t actually have a metabolic benefit.
Ok, this is as clear as mud. So, maybe they help protect your metabolism from slowing while you lose weight, maybe they don’t???
But, there’s one thing that diet breaks do for sure - they give you a mental break. If that is the only benefit, it’s still an amazing benefit. Anything that increases your adherence during your diet and makes you less likely to go off the rails when the diet is over is a great tool to have in your toolbox.
For me personally, I usually live in a maintenance phase, where I don’t count or track anything. I eat just about anything that is real food and have something not so healthy probably once a week or so. My weight fluctuates a little, but not a ton and I’m happy here.
But, when I do want to get a little leaner, I am now to the point where I have to track my food intake to make it happen. And after about 3 weeks I need a break. I bump my calories back up to maintenance level. My weight loss stops for that week and I’m cool with it. Then I’m ready to be aggressive again the following week.
I am not saying this is right for you, I’m just giving you an example of what this looks like for me. Some people need a break once a week. Some people once a month. Some need a break for a day. Others need an entire week or a few months off! Others don’t seem to need them at all. This is something you’ll just have to play with and see if it helps you out.
The key is the break is not a binge! Not a binge! Repeat after me, it is not a weekend, week, or month-long binge! (But it can include your favorite guilty pleasure).
>>> Tracking your progress
As we loosen the reigns on our food choices, sometimes we stop paying attention to our bodies altogether. Before ya know it, half the weight you lost is back. It might be a good idea to keep an eye on things as you’re transitioning to your new way of life, not dieting, but not gaining. Just to make sure that it is in fact working out ok.
Whatever you used to gauge your progress is what you could continue to do. So, if you like the scale, keep checking in with the scale. If you would rather get in a tight pair of pants and see how they fit once a week, do that. (Yeah, my fellow nurses, I’m talking to you. You know we can pack on some serious pounds before we notice in scrubs. Put them tight pants on frequently!)
The key is to not start ignoring your body altogether just because the weight loss is over.
>>> Resistance training
If you weren’t using resistance training to lose weight, you may want to add it in now. Nothing helps keep your metabolism going strong like having more muscle on your body. Not to mention the other benefits from resistance training like getting that toned look, increased bone density, and stress relief.
More muscles = more food you get to eat
>>> Adequate protein
As you loosen the diet, don’t skip the protein! Getting plenty of protein once your diet isn’t quite as “clean” or “strict” as it was will help maintain your muscles but it will also help with appetite control.
Protein is very satiating!
>>> Get in tune with your body
Nothing will help you maintain your weight and your health like reading your body’s cues. Now, this sounds silly. Of course, I know what my body wants!
Well, not so fast...
Most of us ignore our hunger when we’re busy, don’t fully experience our food because we troll on social media while eating, disregard aches and pains as a normal part of aging, etc.
These are just a couple of examples off the top of my head but our busy schedules and constant need for mental stimulation have created a huge disconnect with our bodies. Plus, dieting itself can put some of this out of whack. I mean, you have to eat less to lose weight, and ignoring some hunger signals is kind of par for the course.
Note when you’re hungry, note how you feel after certain foods. Put your phone down and enjoy your meal. Note when you’re full and stop eating instead of snacking in front of the TV where you totally ignore your “I’m full” cues.
All of these things might sound silly but they really can make a big difference in keeping weight off with less effort. And most of us have a lot of room for improvement in this area.
Wrap It Up
Most people don’t keep the weight off long term because the focus is ONLY on weight loss, and not on maintaining the results. But you’re doing things differently this time! Losing weight with purpose; to lose the weight in a healthy way, and continue to focus on the healthy habits you’re developing along the way.
You can lose it and KEEP IT OFF!
There are endless little things you can build into your maintenance plan. Nothing is right or wrong, the key is to actually have a maintenance phase instead of bouncing on and off of diets. Diet to lose the weight, then focus on continuing the healthy habits you have already started creating!
>>> Lose the weight with healthy sustainable changes, so maintenance is built right in!
>>> If following a more aggressive diet plan, take breaks often to avoid burnout.
>>> Get rid of perfection which can be deflating and put us off course, just keep moving forward.
>>> Continue to track your progress after the diet phase at whatever check-in intervals work for you.
>>> Build some fun and support into your plan. This will give you a better chance of incorporating true lifestyle changes.
>>> Add in resistance training to build fat-blasting muscle.
>>> Listen to your body.
>>> Don’t stress about it! You’ve got this lady ;-)
