Almost every woman had at least a couple of dieting cycles in her life. You go on a diet, lose weight, fit into that dress, and after relaxing for a while you notice that it’s time to diet again. Isn’t that tedious?
How to Maintain Weight
There are more than a few diets out there that can help you lose a lot of water (not fat) in the first few days but they are hard to stick to for more than a week. And then you are so hungry and psychologically tired all you want is a big juicy burger or two, or three. The water comes back and you are in even worse situation than the one described earlier. If you are like many people counting calories may not be the best weight managing tool for you. So here are a few tricks that can help you keep your weight from fluctuating.
Stay off fad diets
If you decided to shed some weight don’t go for detoxes, cleanses, and one food diets. Yes, a one day cleanse may be good for your digestive system but doing it for days in order to lose weight is a recipe for disasterous rebound. Instead clean up your diet by reducing sweets, junk food, and processed foods to the minimum and maybe also decreasing your portions if necessary. Besides the results from fad diets are dubious, they make your body shed water, which you will regain once you start eating as usual.
Eat by 80/20 rule
If you managed to lose weight and want to keep it where it is simply not going back to your old eating habits will ensure that you don’t regain all the weight back with time. For easier maintenance eat by 80/20 rule, where 80 per cent of your food intake is clean wholesome foods and the 20 per cent of anything you like.
Track changes
If you want to be more precise about your weight management use whatever measurement tools you find more suiting to keep track of your weight (that’s how you’ll know if you should amend your diet). Don’t obssess over it though especially if you work out as neither scale nor even a measuring tape can tell you exactly why the weight changed. Use mirror and pictures to track your progress more closely.
Keeping your weight in check is important because you keep fitting into the dresses but also keep your skin smooth and tight without stretching out and tightening up with every weight gain and loss.
So I see this every scorching summer – bikini body’s on, come fall bikini body’s off and that’s till spring comes or new year starts and people run to the gym to build themselves anew. Boy, 99% of us probably did this at least once till some of us realized that it’s a no good way to go.
Why Maintain Weight
You’ve probably heard a million times that keeping weight is important. Big fluctuations aren’t good for your skin, mood, and self-esteem. But it’s not just about the skin and it’s not only about big fluctuations either.
You Learn Discipline
A goal not to gain any weight might be even better for your discipline than losing it. You won’t be dieting forever and once you stop you’d probably want to enjoy all those foods you cut out for your dieting period. Here’s where a maintenance goal can prevent you from gaining it all back. Just try it as an experiment. Calculate your calories, balance your macros and stop gaining all that winter weight.
You Don’t Get Stretch Marks
While stretch marks might still occur during puberty when a body starts actively growing or during pregnancy in women it is usually easy to avoid them by simply not gaining or losing weight especially rapidly.
You Look Good
Let’s be honest even 5 pounds can make a difference especially in shorter people when it comes to appearance. And those 5 pounds can be quite hard to lose too. And thus they keep piling on or you just go back and forth gaining and losing them. Don’t allow yourself go beyond a certain comfortable weight where you are content with your composition and muscle tone. This will ensure you can go back to vacation any day of the year and not worry about looking good.
You Don’t Have to Diet
Dieting is hard for everyone. On the one hand, you want to make sure you’re comfortable and not cut the calories too much, on the other, you want the quickest results. This leads to all sorts of problems but the fact of the matter is if you’ve dieted to your goal weight, don’t mess it up. Take control over your appetite by any means necessary be it a food journal, calorie counting, or simply implementing a 80/20 rule for your everday diet. Think about all the discomfort you’ve just been through, how come you don’t get if you’ll have to go through all of it again?
On this note I’d like to point out that the bodybuilding ‘bulking’ and ‘cutting’ phases aren’t ideal for most people. Most people can’t bulk without adding much more fat than muscle to their frames. We aren’t all genetically blessed to do that. And cutting hard later can lead to binging, overeating and all kinds of other eating problems especially in the beginners.
So here is a good strategy to anyone willing to finally turn their life around this year. Once you join the gym, get serious. Don’t waste time on all the bulking, cutting, but bulking cycles. Regardless if whether or not you have excess fat hit the weights and make sure to progress as you become stronger.
Since the first gains come pretty easy you don’t even need a surplus of calories. Muscle will grow. Of course, if you need to lose lots of fat you will need to add cardio. Don’t lose this moment. Build your body by balancing out your proportions and enjoy it by maintaining your results. With time as your skin shrinks to accomodate your new body you’ll look even better.
