Rarely Is Losing Weight Easy

Most people inherently know that achieving a healthy weight requires lifestyle changes, such as eating healthy foods, eating less, and being more active. A key to keeping the weight off is to always reinforce the healthy habits you’ve adopted. While crash diets may allow you to shed pounds quickly, most are impossible to stick with, and the weight can creep back over night. On the other hand, you can shed weight permanently simply by making smart lifestyle changes. By committing to a set amount of time for practicing lifestyle changes, you can gradually see yourself slimming down for the foreseeable future. Instead of focusing on what you should or should not eat, stick with plan.

Tips for Maintaining Your New Weight

You will most likely need to find the right mix of eating patterns and lifestyle habits that work best for your body. That said, listed below are universal tips to follow:

• Pick Colorful Foods – If the only vegetable you have eaten in the past year has been the potato, it is time to add colorful fruits and vegetables to your menu plan. This is important for your overall health and ensures getting enough fiber in your diet.
• Avoid Sugary Drinks – You can lose a pound every three and a half weeks by cutting out a daily soda. Moreover, if you regularly consume more than one soda per day, you can lose even more weight by substituting unsweetened tea or water.
• Prepare Your Own Food – If you prepare your own food at home, you know exactly what the contents are and you will be able to better control hidden sugars and other high-calorie, low-nutrient processed foods. Eat you homecooked food as often as possible.
• Eat Slowly & Enjoy – There are key reasons that you eat too fast. When you are too hungry or are presented with really enticing food, there is a tendency to eat more. When you finally get the chance to eat, avoid shoveling it down.
• Get Your Fruit Fresh – Fruit juice can be a tempting replacement for soda, but commercial fruit juice often lacks the natural fiber found in fresh fruit. If you read the food label, you will see most juices contain very little fruit juice and a lot of added sugar.

Although you should feel free to enjoy a special meal out, maintaining weight loss involves a commitment to living a healthier lifestyle, from which there is no extended timeout. Make sure you don’t lose focus.

Avoid the Temptation of a Short-Term Fix

Focus on your long-term goals of attaining energy balance rather than wasting your efforts on a quick, short-term fix. After you decide that you are going to make a change, the next step is to adopt an attitude that supports your weight loss plan. Then, hold yourself accountable, remove all known negative triggers, and don't blame others for an occasional setback. Extreme behaviors seldom work. If you continuously restrict food choices following a crash diet, it will likely lead to a food binge that can set you back far worse than enjoying an occasional serving in moderation. Changing your attitude can help you see that eating healthy is not just about weight loss. Avoid sudden free-for-alls where anything and everything goes. It is the little things like positive lifestyle changes that make a difference in the end.