5 Tips for Maintaining Your Weight Loss Results

You hit your weight goal, and you feel good. Losing weight is hard, and you deserve to be proud of your accomplishment, but your work isn’t over. Maintaining your weight loss results takes effort, too. 

At Northeast Internal Medicine in Jacksonville, Florida, our team, led by Elyssa Blissenbach, MD, and Lea-Anne Griffis, APRN, specializes in weight loss management. We know how much work you put in to get where you are now, and we do everything we can to help you stay there.

In this month’s blog, we want to share some of our best tips for maintaining your weight loss results.

1. Get enough sleep

Creating healthy habits goes a long way in maintaining your weight loss results. Getting adequate sleep is an easy habit to adopt but one you may overlook. 

Adults need 7-9 hours of sleep a night. People who don’t get enough sleep tend to eat more than they intend and usually choose high-carb comfort foods. Make sleep a priority and get into a good routine, going to bed and waking up at the same time every day, even on the weekends. 

2. Make exercise routine

Physical activity is an important part of your weight-loss program, and to maintain your results, you must keep active. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that adults aim for 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise (brisk walking, shooting hoops, doubles tennis) weekly. 

Though planned exercise is good, you can also add more activity to your daily routine to help you maintain your goal weight. For example, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, parking at the far end of the lot, or pacing back and forth when talking on the phone. 

3. Eat breakfast

Eating breakfast is a great way to start the day — it breaks your fast and replenishes your body’s energy reserves to get you through the morning. Studies show that people who eat a balanced breakfast have an easier time managing their weight. 

Eating breakfast is one of the habits that help people in the National Weight Control Registry (NWCR) do to maintain their weight loss. The NWCR tracks people who’ve lost 60 or more pounds and kept it off for more than five years. 

4. Eat a balanced diet

Despite what the ads claim, no single diet works for all. However, when it comes to maintaining weight loss results, you need to find a healthy eating plan you can follow for life. 

Many weight-loss diets have strict rules or cut out major food groups, making it hard to stick with long-term. Once you reach your goals, you may find yourself reverting to old eating habits leading to weight gain.

Nutrition is part of our weight-loss management program. We help you create a plan you can follow for life, teaching you how to make small changes to your eating habits that lead to big results. 

5. Don’t let setbacks derail your efforts

Despite your best efforts, you may regain some of your lost weight. The trick is not to let your weight gain completely derail your efforts. Forgive yourself and try to get back into the healthy habits that helped you lose weight.

With the right plan and support, you can maintain your weight loss results for life. We’re experts in obesity medicine and weight loss and can help you reach your goals. Call our office or request an appointment online to get started today.