How to maintain your weight loss: tips for long-term success

1Keep tracking

As you move into your maintenance lifestyle, you may no longer feel you need to keep a food diary and track your calories. But this is where it's easy to slip into old eating habits – portions sizes creep up, snacks slip in – so continuing to log your food can be used as a maintenance strategy in the same way as a weight loss strategy. Not necessarily every day, but continuing to be mindful of your choices. Maintaining your awareness of the nutritional content of your food can help you understand what the best weight maintenance diet looks like for you, and if you experience a blip and your weight begins to creep up, you can review your food intake and better understand what might be triggering it.

2Eat for fullness

Following a period of weight loss, the body senses its energy (fat) stores are lower, and programmes our appetite signals to increase hunger and decrease feelings of fullness in an attempt to restock them. This hormone response evolved thousands of years ago as a way for our ancestors to conserve body fat when food was in short supply. However, for those of us trying to maintain a lower weight, it can feel as though our willpower is tested to its limit!

To help manage this unwanted amplification of cravings, choose foods with nutrients that help to keep you feeling full. Protein and fibre are two of the most satiating nutrients, so try to include plenty of these. Sources of protein include meat, fish, eggs, tofu and dairy products (milk, yoghurt, cheese). Sources of fibre include fruit, vegetables, oats, wholegrain starchy carbs (brown bread, pasta, rice and crackers) and other whole grains. Foods that pack in both protein and fibre include beans, pulses (chickpeas, lentils), quinoa, nuts and seeds.

Additionally, fill your plate with veggies and salad to increase your portion size without exceeding your energy needs for the day.

3Enjoy indulgent meals, not days or weeks

A large cohort study of individuals who had maintained their weight loss for over 1 year revealed several key factors behind their success. One of the points was termed 'perseverance in the face of setbacks' [1]. A common attitude that may have cropped up over your weight loss journey is that once you have a meal off-track, your efforts go out the window for the rest of the day or even week, vowing to start again on Monday. Not only does this approach hinder your weight loss, but it can also derail your efforts to maintain your weight loss achievements. So avoid this by enjoying more indulgent meals as a one-off, and ensure the next meal is a healthy, nutritious one. The key is to get straight back on track at the next meal occasion – not waiting for the next day. This doesn't mean restricting your next meal, just try to choose wholesome, minimally processed foods.

4Establish a good exercise routine

Now this isn't just about the instant calorie burn we get from cardio-based exercises. Exercise can actually be your not-so-secret weapon to increasing your maintenance calories.

It all comes down to your body composition. As your body becomes lighter, the calories needed to maintain your weight decrease, so you'll be on a lower calorie maintenance intake than you were before you started your journey. While weight plays a large role in your metabolic energy needs, so does the amount of muscle you have. Muscle is a more metabolically active tissue than fat, meaning it burns through more calories just by being in your body.

Contrary to common concern, especially amongst women, increasing the muscle in your body doesn't mean becoming 'bulky'. It's actually rather difficult even for men to achieve large muscles, so women find it even more challenging due to differing hormone levels. To increase your lean tissue mass, the best strategy is combining strength training with an increased protein intake. To learn more about building muscle, read more in our blog here.

5Set yourself a maintenance range

After all your hard work, it might be a shock to step on the scales and see you've gained a pound or two. This can understandably make you feel anxious, but please don't worry – it's perfectly normal (you can read about weigh-in fluctuations in this blog). Our weight will fluctuate on a daily basis – no one stays the same weight 100% of the time. Our recommendation is to set yourself a weight range you commit to stay within – usually around 3lbs either side of your goal weight. Keeping within a threshold like this is much more realistic than trying to stick to a fixed number. It also eases the fear that a couple of pounds gain means you're heading back to where you started. The key is to take action when you hit your upper weight threshold and switch back to weight loss for a week or two. We have a saying, 'look after the pounds and the stones will take care of themselves'.

6Keep your diet consistent

Instead of being uber-healthy on weekdays and then going all out on the weekends, research on long-term maintainers has revealed that keeping a consistently balanced diet over both weekdays and weekends proves key to keeping the weight off [2]. Think of applying the 80:20 attitude on a daily basis instead of a weekly basis – including a treat for dessert at the end of each day, or perhaps eating a really nutritious breakfast and lunch to prepare for a more indulgent evening out with friends. This may help you to manage your new weight better than a big blow-out for two days straight. It's all about using the skills you've learned on your weight loss journey and continuing a level of awareness around your food choices.