Weight Loss and Weight Maintenance
How many people love losing weight? It is exciting, and people notice you are looking better, and you may feel energetic and exhilarated by the improvement in your overall wellbeing. Unfortunately, weight loss happens over a finite period, after which you need to work to maintain that weight loss for as long as you can. Weight maintenance is not fun; it is boring, and drudgery, and often doing the same things you did to lose weight, but now need to do just to maintain the weight loss. Here are some ideas to help you maintain that weight loss:
1) Work to establish good habits during your period of weight loss, while you are still enjoying the results of your new behaviours. If you can establish them as part of your life, the way you brush your teeth or shower, while you are still losing weight, it will be easier to maintain them for the long term after the fun part is over.
2) Keep it fresh: every week, change what you are doing, make a new challenge, or try a new recipe. By doing this, you will avoid the boredom that causes people to slide back into old habits.
3) Accept that you will backslide from time to time; behaviour change is very difficult. Don’t dwell on your slips; figure out what happened and work on avoiding the same slip going forward.
January is almost over; vow to work on new habits for a new year, focusing on habits which you can sustain and which will promote good health as you lose weight.
