Numerous studies have shown that the majority of people who lose weight end up gaining it again. The majority of that group then embarks on a diet and weight-gain career.
Once you’re in, there’s only two ways to break the dieting cycle:
Give up or learn how to stop dieting without gaining weight again.
Dieting itself is contrary to human nature. We have to eat to survive, but there’s something inherently wrong with carrying around a calorie counter and obsessing over how many calories are in every recipe.
Keeping track of everything you eat and severely limiting calories can limit essential nutrients and make you feel miserable. And there’s no way around feeling deprived when you following a list of rules and doing without food with calories and macronutrients.
Without discovering how to stop dieting without gaining weight, you feel bad all the time. It’s bad to be overweight and just as bad to deprive yourself of the foods you need and love.
Some overweight people are lucky enough to slim down one time, and never deal with weight issues again. Most people find themselves dealing with weight loss over and over until they finally give up.
But the truth is, you can crack the code, lose weight, get fit, and maintain your ideal weight.
How? By implementing these best weight loss tips that actually work for losing and maintaining a healthy weight.
The following tips are really common sense advice. They’re not magic, at all. Just sensible methods that sensible people know can help them lose weight, and keep it off.
Implementing them into your life as lifestyle changes will help you change your mind and habits. That’s important because habits drive our life, and our waist size.
How to Stop Dieting Without Gaining Weight
1. Goals
Instead of waking up one morning and skipping breakfast because you’re tired of ill fitting clothes, Start With Goals. Written Goals.
Start with very realistic goals that are achievable with only a little effort. As you actually see yourself meeting pre-set goals your motivation will soar. But that’s not all, you will soon get a handle on what’s realistic and what’s not.
Whether you have 20 lbs. to lose or 150 lbs., start out by writing your weekly and monthly goals. Get as fancy with this as you like, but a simple spiral notebook works.
Sit yourself down with a calendar and write your present weight at the top of the page. Now deduct a pound and write that number on a line 7 days from now.
Write the new number for each week, and the weight you intend to be at in 4 weeks on a different line.
Listen, losing weight is hard because it requires changing habits that are well entrenched. The easiest way to change habits is with goal sheets. Please don’t take goal setting for weight loss lightly. Goals and journaling is what separates the winners from the losers.
2. Journaling
Consistency is vital when it comes to dieting and losing weight. When you think about it, weight loss would be pretty simple if it weren’t for your habits?
You can’t really change eating habits, you must build new habits that overrule and replace the old ones. Journaling can help with weight loss because it helps create new habits.
Simply put, journaling will keep you up to date on:
- What you eat
- When you eat
- What triggers eating between meals
- How many calories you eat
- If you exercised or not
- How you felt when and after you ate
Start out by choosing a journal, or any sort of notebook, that you will use. Purchase a journal made specifically for weight loss, or just create your own.
You may even want two? One very small pocket size notebook to carry with you at all times, and a “full size” journal at home to transfer your notes into.
Like setting goals, the most important tip you’ll ever get is to journal your weight loss efforts.
Journaling will change the way you look at food and eat in a very short time as well as to help you know why your weight fluctuates. It may seem a little, or a lot, bundle some at first. But it will become easier and less troublesome every single day for a couple of weeks, until it’s just second nature.
Again, read this post if you’re serious enough about shedding the pounds to take up journaling.
3. Scales to Weight Yourself
Here’s an easy tip: buy a set of scales for weighing yourself! Without scales it’s impossible to track your goals, right?
You need goals, and you need bathroom scales to track your weight and goals. There’s plenty of ideas, and confusion, about how often to weigh yourself when dieting.
Don’t get lost in all of that, but do decide and stick to it. My opinion is this: Set your dates in your goal book, and only weigh on those dates. In reality, what does it matter if you weigh every day or every week? Not much.
However, only weighing once a week, turns out to be best for staying focused on what you’re doing. And if you’re checking your weight every day it’s easy to get discouraged because your weight fluctuates even while it’s going down.
The more important tip on scales is to weigh in at the same time of the day each time so you’ll have a more accurate account. I definitely tip the scales at my lowest point of the day as soon as I get out of bed. That’s when I weigh once a week.
4. Take Pictures
This could be the most rewarding part of your dieting efforts. Take and keep up with pictures of your progress. And without taking a picture the day you set your goals, you won’t know where you started.
It will amaze you to look back at the before and after selfies you take of yourself. The first one should be your first motivator. After that, take one each week when you weigh and post your results.
Taking pictures of yourself is really better than looking in the mirror. The pictures will force you to see yourself as others see you.
Most everyone can see a difference in the way they look with a 10 pound loss. You’ll start feeling much better about yourself as you compare the pictures and they will spur you forward.
5. Don’t Go on Crash Diets
Crash diets are as popular as ever. You just get up one morning, decide you’re too fat, and stop eating. Or maybe you decide you’ll just exist on water for a few days?
If you intend to lose weight, and maintain it for the long term, don’t bother with crash dieting. Harsh dieting with extremely low calories may sound like the route to fast weight loss, but your body will fight back. And likely get you back to even a worse place than ever.
Crash diets always make outrageous claims about how much weight you can lose in a week. And the truth is, you may do it. But only for the short term.
Skipping meals and then binging afterward because you are so hungry is not the proper way to diet. Doing this will create havoc to your digestive system, resulting in ulcer, acid reflux and a host of digestive problems. What is more, binging can also slow down the metabolism of the body, thereby resulting in bloating.
Crash diets are a terrible idea because making drastic changes to your diet adversely affects your body. Most of the weight you lose will be water and muscle tissue, not fat.
These lose weight fast diets set you up for bad returns. First of all, a high percentage of people follow up crash diets with binge eating that easily puts the weight back on. And maybe more?
Next, they are notorious for getting people in a cycle of losing and gaining over and over. None of that is good for your health, and certainly not for long term weight maintenance.
6. No Quick Fixes
It’s easy to be attracted to quick medical fixes that make the fats disappear in an instant. Although most doctors are qualified to do the operations, it is still not a hundred percent safe procedure. You are risking a lot. Even with the most sophisticated technology in place, a lot of things can happen.
Another downside to surgeries is the fact that the weight easily comes back. Unlike weight lost through exercise and better eating habits, fats that are liposuctioned or lasered are easily gained back. Not because these are artificial but because the person has never learned the discipline to maintain the weight.
This is why, it is recommended by doctors for people to go for the natural way of burning fats, through exercise and proper diet.
7. Eating More Often
Did you know you can actually eat more often and lose weight? That’s it, eat less each time, and eat more times works.
You don’t really have to skip your meals in order to lose those pounds. Nutritionists suggest a better alternative for losing weight through dieting. A person can actually eat smaller amounts of food, but spread over a longer period of time.
This minimizes binges, which affect the way food is digested. Too much consumption of food can slow down the digestive system. Undigested food can lead to bloating, which enlarges the frame. By eating only small amounts, this ensures complete digestion and better adsorption.
Here’s 3 good reasons you should try eating less more often:
- Increased Metabolism. By eating every couple of hours instead of the usual 5 or 6, you keep your metabolism stoked. When you’re metabolism is working, your body is looking for either proteins, carbs, or fat stores in your body for energy. If you’ve been eating healthy, and leaving off the junk food, the increased metabolism will start burning fat stores.
- Lose Weight. The increased metabolism is always the key to losing weight. As important as exercising at home is to weight loss, it’s raising the resting metabolism that does the job. Eating very small, healthy and complete meals every 2-3 hours can really help you lose weight.
- More Energy. You will avoid those afternoon crashes and have way more energy all the time. Just remember, eating less more often has nothing to do with snacking. You will kill your energy and weight loss by eating anything other than healthy foods, particularly vegetables and proteins every 2-3 hours.
8. Cheat Days
I call them cheat days, because they feel like getting to cheat on a test? But it’s really important to your motivation to have one day a week to eat whatever you like.
Dieting can be hard on the emotions and mind. But if you have one day a week to look forward to eating junk foods you love, it makes losing weight much easier.
These are the days to go to your favorite restaurant or just eat a quart of ice cream at home. However, there are a couple of things to remember about your cheat days.
- You could burn up a weeks worth of calorie deficit in a day?
- Eating a lot of rich foods after doing without for a week can cause pretty bad food hangovers.
- Eating the foods you love in moderation on cheat days reinforces the idea that you are taking your diet seriously.
9. Eat at The Table
Why is it important to eat at the table?
A recent review of the research found that those who eat their meals at a table were more likely to consume meals that were well-rounded nutritionally. Putting some thought into your food choices is crucial. When eating at a table, you’re more likely to focus on what you’re eating and enjoy every bite.
Eating at the table instead of on the way to work, or from the gym keeps you in touch with what you’re eating and why you eat.
Believe it not, it’s much easier to eat too much and unhealthy foods in front of the TV.
It’s well documented that when you watch TV and eat, you forget you’re eating and eat at the same tempo as the program you’re watching.
Conclusion
Dieting for weight loss usually means to deprive yourself of foods you love while counting calories.
Knowing how to maintain weight loss after low calorie diet is crucial to maintaining a healthy weight.
The key is knowing how to reverse diet without gaining weight, and it’s not that hard. This technique keeps you from going from dieting to binge eating immediately afterwards.
Increasing calories after undereating for weeks is what keeps the dieting and gaining cycle going forever.
If you want to eat more following a diet without gaining weight, reverse dieting may be the way to go. It is gradually increasing your calorie consumption over a few weeks or months.