How to Keep Weight Off, According to Research
Key takeaways:
Burning energy every day through physical activity is the best way to keep weight off.
Other things help too, like logging what you eat and eating healthy.
Getting enough sleep is also important.
Making changes to reach a healthier body weight is difficult. Maintaining your weight loss over time seems to be much more of a challenge. However, some studies on people who have maintained their weight loss can give us some ideas as to what works best. Below is a summary of what they have learned.
Why is maintaining weight loss so difficult?
After we lose weight, we can feel hungrier than we did when we were heavier. It’s also easy to fall back into our old lifestyle and eating patterns and habits. This is especially true if you’ve not set up your environment to support a healthy lifestyle. Ways to set up a healthy environment could include:
Keeping tennis shoes or a change of clothes at work so you can go for a walk at lunch or go to the gym after work
Packing a healthy lunch that was planned for, purchased, or prepared ahead of time
Keeping a box of protein bars in your drawer or car in case you get hungry
Making weekend plans with friends who like to go for bike rides instead of watching sports on television while eating and drinking
Setting your phone alarm in the evening to remind you to turn off any screens or devices and have a wind down routine to prepare for a restful sleep
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It’s also easy to return to our old ways and gain weight if we haven’t confronted and worked through any stressful issues in our lives that contributed to emotional eating.
Can daily exercise help with weight loss maintenance?
Daily physical activity is necessary to maintain weight loss. Different studies reach different conclusions on exactly how much activity is needed to prevent regaining weight. The American College of Sports Medicine recommends at least 30 minutes of activity, 5 days per week. However, a review of weight maintenance studies suggests a range of 60 to 90 minutes of activity per day is often reported by individuals who successfully maintained their weight loss.
What is certain is that people who’ve kept weight off make regular physical activity a part of their daily habits. Burning energy from activity means that an occasional slip up in your eating habits won’t derail you. Try to have a regular system or routine. This might include spending 15 minutes every morning doing yoga or calisthenics, such as pushups, planks, or body weight squats, and then taking a brisk 30-minute walk every day at lunchtime.
What is the best form of exercise for weight loss maintenance?
No one type of exercise has been proven to be best for weight maintenance. Because regular physical activity is so important for maintaining weight, any activity you enjoy and can most easily fit into your daily routines is probably the best choice. Mixing in different kinds of exercise gives you options in case you have an injury such as a sprained ankle or the weather doesn’t allow for an outdoor walk at lunchtime.
Keep a food and exercise journal
Record keeping is another habit of successful weight loss maintainers. Writing down what you eat and drink in a food log is especially helpful, as is regularly monitoring body weight using a scale. Keeping an exercise log also seems to help, but not as much as recording food and body weight.
Keeping a journal makes us mindful and accountable for what foods we are choosing and why. Without a journal, you may:
Mindlessly grab a snack, even if you’re not hungry
Eat a larger portion or go back for seconds
Say yes to another round of drinks
Logging your food intake, activity level, and weight can also allow you to make adjustments if you’re getting off track. Health and fitness tracker apps on your smartphone seem to be as helpful as a handwritten journal.
Make healthy food choices
People who successfully keep the weight off have these healthy habits in common:
Eat more fruits, vegetables, and fiber. It’s a good idea to eat more whole, unprocessed foods that contain a lot of nutrients.
Drink fewer sugar-sweetened drinks. This includes soda, fruit juices, and various bottled or canned beverages that contain a lot of sugar and calories.
Cut out unhealthy foods. Limit how much you eat of junk foods like chips, candy, deep-fried foods, and processed and packaged foods and snacks.
Control portion sizes. Being aware of how much you are eating and not overdoing it will allow you to find the right balance and maintain your weight.
These behaviors are linked with maintaining weight loss. This means that research doctors have noticed a pattern: The people who reported these behaviors also reported being successful at keeping their weight off.
How can I figure out the amount of calories I need to maintain my weight loss?
Your calorie needs will vary depending on your:
Height
Weight
Activity level
Age
To get an estimate on how many calories you need, use an online calculator like this Body Weight Planner from the National Institutes of Health. You may fine tune this number by looking at your food journal and monitoring your weight on the scale.
In addition to the number of calories, the types of foods containing those calories, or the quality of the calories, is also important. People who successfully keep the weight off emphasize high-quality foods that contain a lot of nutrients and are minimally processed.
What role does sleep play in weight loss and weight maintenance?
Sleep influences our hunger levels and how our bodies process and burn food as fuel, also called metabolism. Not surprisingly, sleep has been linked to successful weight maintenance. The trick is to set your bedtime and your morning alarm clock to match your body’s natural, internal clock, which is your circadian rhythm. For folks who tend to stay up late at night, this will mean going to bed earlier. Doing this has been shown to regulate our appetites, hormones, and metabolism — all of which support a healthy weight.
The bottom line
Incorporating healthy habits and behaviors is good for your health and body, regardless of whether or not it causes weight loss. But if you’ve achieved a certain level of success and want to maintain your weight, you may want to incorporate these habits, which have been shown to work for so many others.
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