I can’t believe that I’ve never written about keeping weight off for life! I know I have written a lot about some of its components, like making fitness a lifestyle, but never head on. So it’s time! This is what it takes to keep weight off for life.
Keeping Weight Off For Life
I believe the bottom line in making sure you keep the weight you lose off for the rest of your life is that you truly make a lifestyle change. Even if you crush 90 days of P90X, Body Beast, or MAX30… Even if you are perfect on your nutrition, dialed in to the gram… Even if you drink your Shakeology every day… If it doesn’t truly change your habits, it won’t last. If at the end of 90 days you go back to your old way of life, you’ll get the same results that your old lifestyle produced for you before.
You have to keep going! While you might not continue with the same intensity or exact focus, lifelong results are made and maintained each and every day.
How to Set Yourself Up For Lifelong Success
For me, I was hooked. After completing P90X, there was no way I could stop. Fitness and exercise had become my favorite hobby and activity. I love to work out!
Coupled with that, I had broken a lot of bad habits when it came to my eating. I had made enough new habits that I wasn’t overly tempted to fall back into my old ways, but I know if I would’ve let myself go back to eating like I had before, it would’ve been bad and I would have never maintained my results. I loved how I felt and what I could now do!
I think this is the same for a lot of people. Working out is fun and becomes an easy habit to keep going, but really sticking to the nutrition side of things is hard.
Make a New Lifestyle and Maintain Your Weightloss
I don’t think this is a comprehensive list, but here are some of my takeaways for how to approach what comes after day 90 as a lifestyle change.
- Food is neither good or evil! – This can be hard coming off of a nutrition plan where you’ve been at a deficit and somewhat restricted on what you can eat. We tend to look at food and call it “bad” if it’s something we can’t easily fit in our nutrition plan.
What’s really true is something I’ve heard a few places (so I don’t want to take credit for) but “food is only as good or bad as the diet it’s contained within.”
Practically illustrated it’s this: Eating one Oreo will not make you fat. It’s primarily carbs and some fat. And if you only eat one, it’s not a lot of either of those macros. The problem is a lot of us can’t eat just one LOL we have old, bad habits that make that almost impossible. Then we do the really damaging thing of calling that food “bad” or “dirty.” So we eat one, feel guilty, think we ruined our whole day, so why not finish off the whole row! Can you see how crazy this is LOL?! Here is a great post on guilt if you need some help in that area.
So as you move past 90 days, or whenever you reach your goal and want to maintain, keep tracking but start allowing yourself to work in some small and controlled portions of foods you may have made off limits. Hit your macros and trust me, you will see that those foods are NOT evil.
**Caution! Food addiction is real. So you need to know yourself. If you know certain foods will trigger you to fall off the wagon, they aren’t worth it. It’s not that they’re evil or bad, they just don’t work for you.**
- No one looks like there after pictures forever! – Another hard one for some people. It’s easy to see someone’s after pic and think, “Man, I can’t believe he walks around that jacked!” Well I am here to tell you that whoever the person is, they don’t walk around that jacked LOLAfter pictures are the pinnacle! They are the best of the best of what that person could do. I know I always get pumped up from a workout before taking them, get just the right light, and get just the right angles. There are great representation of your hard work, but it’s not realistic for life.
I think there are two healthy expectations/goals to have while maintaining your weight loss: Aim for your clothes to fit the same going forward and change your goals to look at your performance more during workouts. You might not have exactly the same body fat percentage, but you know you’ll be maintaining your results if you’re not having to buy new pants or new shirts. And you will get to feel so proud as you set personal bests while you are improving your fitness and strength!
- Give the scale its proper place. – As you are maintaining, you want to shift your mindset when it comes to the scale to focus on a range. Day to day, you aren’t going to be the exact same weight. You should be close, but what you’ll use the scale for is trends. If you’re not bulking and your weight is trending up over 2 to 3 weeks, then you need to either dial back your calories or up the intensity of your workouts. For me, a 3 to 5 pound range over a week is completely fine. So many of those changes are due to things like water intake and sodium. I don’t let it bother me and I just keep looking for trends. If I was 245 +/- 3# a few weeks ago, and now I am staying around 250 +/- 3# for a week or so, I know I have gained some weight and might need to dial it in a bit more.
- Keep it FRESH! – Near the end of your program, have fun dreaming about what to do next. Is there a new program you really want to try? Did you hit your body fat goal and want to move to maintenance and maybe even bulking? Is there some event or activity you want to train for (like a Spartan Race, Tough Mudder, half marathon)?Find what interests you and go for it! With how many options Beachbody has now, you don’t have to do 5 rounds of P90X unless you really love it. Also, with Beachbody On-Demand you get tons of programs right at your fingertips to test out and see which you fall in love with.
Doing fun stuff with buddies to keep it fresh!
Keeping Weight Off For Life
I hope you found this helpful! I hope it was also encouraging. The reasons you should want to keep weight off for life are big. A healthy life allows you to do so much more – for your family, at work and in business, with your friends, and just for you!
Keep BRINGING it – for life!
Coach Wayne
Need a coach?
My email: coachwayne@teamripped.com
IG: @wayne_wyatt
