The weight loss industry is full of successful people who lost weight but also full of examples of people who did regained that weight and in most cases put even more weight back on.
The reason that people are unsuccessful in keeping weight off are set out below. This information is from the articles linked below.
Successful weight loss is as much about losing weight as it is about keeping it off. The last thing you want to do is YoYo your way through your weight management future.
Continuous monitoring
Continuous monitoring is about monitoring the factors that are involved in your weight loss journey.
This includes, monitoring your food intake, including calories and macronutrients.
This includes monitoring your weight regularly.
This includes monitoring your activity levels which contribute to your calorie output or how many calories your burning. For example training sessions. The number of steps while walking.
Monitoring your output is important in managing both weight loss and weight maintenance.
1. Self Monitoring
Self monitoring can be done though Apps that help to calculate calories and macronutrients, food diaries, food scales and other tracking Apps.
Self monitoring is also important in food preparation, weighing food, preparing meals for work or family gatherings. Being prepared for parties, family gatherings and holidays.
Regular weighing and circumference measurements are important. It is also important to make sure that ranges of your wait are employed as boundaries. If weight starts creeping up that diet changes are made to lose some weight.
2. External monitoring
This could be achieved through trainers, weight loss groups or online coach monitoring.
3. Intrinsic motivation
This include wanting to improve health, improve confidence or remove social feelings of embarrassment.
Feeling like you have a better social standing at work or in group situations.
Feeling more confident leading to greater work opportunities and potential social gains such as forming relationships.
Extrinsic motivation
Extrinsic motivation came from the feeling that the weight loss gives within a social setting.
The confidence giving when given compliments for weight loss.
Not feeling public shame for carrying weight.
Potential employment enhancement.
This type of motivation is based on the sentiment and motivation of how others treat you in a social setting when you lose weight.
4. Personalised Goal Setting
It is important to make goals and continue to keep updating goals. People who successfully lose weight also need to make goals around maintaining weight loss or make further goals for weight loss.
The goals need to be personalised because it means more to people when it is their own goal.
5. External Goal Setting
These are goals that come from other outside sources. From my personal experience these types of goals mean very little unless you take ownership of those goals.
6. Intrinsic challenges
These are all the challenges that you meet every day such as lack of time, boredom, relationship changes, deaths, employment changes and all other aspects that affect you personally.
These are challenges that you need to work around in order to continue to meet goals and sustain or make continued progress in weight loss.
7. Extrinsic Challenges
This can be social events that pop up, family and life challenges that affect you from the challenge of planning food, time as well as the challenge of people putting pressure on your lifestyle changes and the effects on them.
Sometimes it can be difficult to meet goals when outside challenges affect your own adherence to goals. Working around these challenges can be difficult when trying to lose or maintain weight loss.
8. Encouraging Experiences
When people compliment your weight loss or when you are able to fit into clothes that didn’t fit or you try on clothes and you like how you look in those clothes it certainly makes you feel better.
Losing weight is a great personal achievement but the other experiences of losing weight such as confidence to do things you hadn’t done in a while definitely makes you feel better.
9. Discouraging Experiences
This can be the fear of putting weight back on and how that will feel socially and from a personal standpoint.
It can be discouraging to put some weight back on and be aware of it when putting clothes on that once fit and now they feel tight again or worse still they don’t fit.
Public comments such as people discussing your weight gain. When people comment about your regaining of weight can lead to discouragement.
What it takes to continue to maintain weight loss.
Losing Weight is a huge goal and it takes goal setting, discipline and planning. But it takes the same goal setting discipline and planning to keep weight off in the long term.
They say that staying still is going backwards. What that really means from a weight loss sense is that you need to make continued goals to move forward.
I find it useful have other external goals that utilise the weight loss you achieved. These could be competing in sports.
To continue to stay in the game you need to plan your food and you need to continue to exercise.
It has to be your new lifestyle. After many years of planning it gets easier to plan but complacency will always lead to poor results.
Or weight gain.
Have a plan, have a contingency and continue to monitor. If weight creeps back on just adjust your diet to reduce calories until you reach your next goal and then readjust again to maintain that goal.
Then make a new goal.
Make your lifestyle about your weight and your health and your fitness.
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