The 5 Most Important Steps to Maintain Your Goal Weight

By Gina DeMillo Wagner, Experience Life

Congratulations! You did it! You worked hard, ate well and shed some serious pounds. Anyone who’s traveled down the weight-loss path knows that’s no easy feat. They also know it’s only half the battle. Now the goal is to keep those pounds off for good.

Research suggests that without a thoughtful maintenance plan, the vast majority of “big losers” find themselves back where they started in relatively short order. They revert to old habits, get derailed by stress or life changes, or lose weight too rapidly, disrupting their metabolism and making their losses nearly impossible to maintain. A 2010 Penn State College of Medicine study, for example, found that nearly 83 percent of people regain most, if not all, of it within a year. Other studies have shown that as many as 95 percent of people who lost 10 percent or more of their body weight regain a significant amount of weight in five years.

There are plenty of success stories, however. Sue Thompson, MS, a clinical psychologist and motivational speaker in Wilmington, Del., lost 85 pounds and has kept almost all of it off since 2007. “It took me two years to lose the weight,” she recalls, “then I gained 20 back and had to work like crazy to lose 10 of that.”

It helps to remember that hitting your goal weight isn’t the finish line, Thompson explains. You don’t stop the healthy habits once you see that magic number on the scale. That would be like someone quitting smoking, then celebrating by buying a pack of cigarettes. “To succeed, you gather your strategies and make them so much a part of your life that eventually you don’t even think about them,” she says.

You’re ahead of the game if you lost weight slowly and in a healthy manner, explains Julie Starkel, MS, MBA, RD, a functional-medicine nutritionist and registered dietitian at Green Lake Nutrition in Seattle.

Ideally, you should lose no more than 5 percent of your body weight in three months, Starkel says. Why? Your body has a “set point,” the weight at which all your organs and body systems (including your metabolism) function at their best.

The set point serves an evolutionary purpose: It’s the body’s way of monitoring your fat stores for survival. Trouble is, the set point doesn’t distinguish between dieting and starvation. Don’t worry: It will adjust slowly as you lose weight. “But if you lose weight too rapidly, your set point can’t keep up,” she says, “so you’ll have to work harder to maintain the weight loss while your body adjusts.”

Sometimes it can take a full year for your body’s set point to catch up to your weight loss, Starkel adds. “So if you dropped weight fast, you’ll have to be much more diligent than someone who lost weight slowly.”

Either way, “you can up your odds of long-term success by taking care of yourself and paying attention to a few key factors,” explains Jean Fain, LICSW, MSW, author of The Self-Compassion Diet (Sounds True, 2010). Here are five ways to make your weight-loss success a lasting one.

The first step: self-compassion

1 of 7

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of
Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

Zazgyva A.

9:56AM PDT on Aug 1, 2012

good info, ty

August 1
send a green star

Dale O.

8:23AM PDT on Jul 31, 2012

Interesting article as one has to be very careful about setting oneself up for disappointment in the long run especially if some follow fad style diets and then give up.

Some I know are compulsively obsessed about weight, it controls almost every thought and deed, a constant put down of themselves and resentment of anything representing fat including hatred of obese people as it reminds them of their constant obsession of weight.

Eating mindfully at meals is wonderful, savouring flavours, abundance and taking one's time is relaxing and comforting.

However the idea of avoiding the TV/computer at meal times depends on the amount of space one has. If the dining room is in an actual room or at the kitchen table it is much easier, but if one's table is in front of the computer and TV where the chair is, well...one can multi-task especially when the blind cat likes the sound of the TV on as a location beacon. She prepurrs it tuned to the TV-Nature radio where the crows are cawing and the birds are singing.

Compulsively hitting the Add Comment button is also obsessive, or an easy way to gain 20 points and if the comment doesn't take at first, it will be there if you return an hour from now to check...once you see the 20 butterfly points fly off, the comment is done. You may not see it for eons but it is there even if you hit the button 2 or 3 times. 15 times... is...well this is a constant with some! Counted 15 times in the "Thx!" escapade, repeated behaviour elsewh

July 31
send a green star

Barb M.

6:44PM PDT on Jul 24, 2012

Thanks for posting!

July 24
send a green star

Sarah M.

5:28PM PDT on Jul 7, 2012

thanks

July 7
send a green star

Abbe A.

6:19AM PDT on Jun 25, 2012

June 25
send a green star

Winn A.

6:38PM PDT on Jun 12, 2012

Thanks for the info.

June 12
send a green star

Laura M.

11:33AM PDT on Jun 12, 2012

I'm not exactly trying to lose or maintain weight but I'm trying to get in shape, and it's really frustrating not to see results quickly. It's especially frustrating that I'd actually LIKE to be doing more but my job demands I sit still for 8 hours a day and my home demands I take care of my aging parents and their aging house so I barely have time to do anything else.
Thanks for the info! Anyone have tips for my particular situation?

Past Member .

4:15AM PDT on Jun 12, 2012

Thanks for the info

Harshiita S.

9:53PM PDT on Jun 11, 2012

Thanks for the post!