Congratulations on reaching your weight loss goal! Yes, you’ve lost some weight, but it’s your strength and confidence that also shine through. We share your joy and celebrate with you.
When you started this journey to get to a healthy weight, you doubted your ability to reach your weight loss goal. Losing weight wasn’t easy. You increased your physical activity, changed your eating habits, committed to a healthier lifestyle, and focused on the long-term goals despite the twists and turns, bumps, and potholes.
The information, skills, and motivation from your program allowed you to be successful. More importantly, you decided to value your health and make it a priority. Now, you may not have thought much about anything more than losing weight and fitting into your skinny jeans. However, by losing 3-5% of your body weight, you lowered your risk for heart disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and some cancers. And, if you have diabetes or high blood pressure, those numbers will come down. Let’s do a happy dance!
But, I need to be honest with you. Losing weight is only half the battle. Maintaining a healthy weight after you’ve lost a significant amount of weight is tough. Studies show that only about 20% of overweight or obese people who lose a significant amount of weight keep it off in the long term.
So, take a few moments and let that sink in.
OK, now for the good news. Rather than get discouraged, you will learn some tips to refocus your weight loss goals and keep the weight off. Yes, not regaining all the weight that you lost is a worthy weight loss goal. So, what does this mean? It means that after you’ve done the happy dance, your attention and efforts will shift to refocusing your weight loss goal.
Why People Regain Weight
So, before we talk about how to refocus your weight loss goal, let’s talk about why people have a hard time maintaining their weight loss goal. After years as a registered dietitian nutritionist and as a researcher, I believe that most people have a hard time maintaining their weight loss goal because of: 1) being on unhealthy, restrictive diets, 2) feeling deprived, and 3) having a quick and easy mindset.
Unhealthy, Restrictive Diets
Most people achieve their weight loss by starving themselves. It is well documented that very-low-calorie diets decrease the satiety hormone (leptin) and increase the hunger hormone (ghrelin). As a result, you get very hungry and feel deprived. Furthermore, your body thinks that it’s being starved, so it slows your metabolism. Have you ever skipped breakfast and lunch and then ate everything in sight at night? Yes, we’ve been there a time or two. So, if you lost weight primarily by just eating very little food, you will regain the weight once you start eating normally again. The bottom line is that these diets will not help you achieve your weight loss goal in the long run.
Feeling Deprived
After dieting for a while, you may feel deprived. And, this does not even have to be for a very long time. For example, you may eat healthily and exercise during the week but feel “deprived” by the weekend. After all, you’ve been “good” and think you deserve to eat or drink whatever you want.
Another reason for feeling deprived is that you are following someone else’s rules for losing weight, especially what you can or can’t eat. And, this happens a lot with very restrictive diets. Remember how you devoured bread and potatoes after giving them up for a week?
Quick and Easy Mindset
Now, you don’t want to miss this point. There is no quick and easy way to keep the weight off once you’ve lost it. Yes, you might have lost a lot of weight on that quick, weight loss diet, but the bigger challenge will be trying to stick to that diet in the long-term. Furthermore, many diets are based on willpower rather than creating healthy habits you can incorporate into your daily life. So, the bottom line is that you want to focus on healthy and realistic lifestyle changes that will improve your health and overall quality of life in the long-term.
How to Refocus Your Weight Loss Goal
When you started the program, you knew how much you weighed and how much weight you wanted to lose. And, you may not have achieved your weight loss goal, but you lost enough to see significant progress.
Now, it is time to refocus your weight loss goal. Whether your weight loss goal is to lose a few more pounds or to keep off the weight that you’ve lost, it is important to consider a few important questions.
- What is your ideal weight?
- What is your ideal dress size?
- If you never achieved your desired weight, what weight would be acceptable?
- If you never achieved your desired dress size, what size would be acceptable?
Your “ideal” weight is how much you really, really want to weigh. It may not be realistic, but this is your dream weight.
Now, here is the reality check. If you never achieve that “ideal” weight, what is your “acceptable” weight? This is the weight at which you could be satisfied if you never reach or maintain your ideal weight. At what weight can you be at peace with yourself? Before you answer too quickly, think about where you are in your life. Are you still struggling to lose the baby weight even though your baby is five? Have you struggled with your weight most of your teen and adult life? Are you in menopause? Have you been diagnosed with diabetes or hypertension?
Write these numbers down to help refocus your weight loss goal
You should also be honest with your doctor or health coach about your ideal and acceptable weight to make sure that you’re on the same page. This is important because you are working together to help you be the healthiest you possible.
| Ideal weight | |
| Acceptable weight | |
| Ideal dress size | |
| Acceptable dress size |
Realistically, your “ideal” numbers and your “acceptable” numbers will be different.
Now, let’s look at Susan as an example.
How Susan Refocused Her Weight Loss Goals
A year ago, Susan weighed 185 pounds at the start of her weight loss program. Based on her height of 5 feet 5 inches, this weight put her in the “obese” category for her height on the body mass index (BMI) chart. She wore a size 18 dress.
Susan needed to refocus her weight loss goal. Her ideal weight was 125 pounds and her desired dress size was a size 8. This ideal weight put her in the “healthy” category for her height on the BMI chart. However, Susan’s acceptable weight was 135 pounds and her acceptable dress size was a size 12. This acceptable weight also put her in the “healthy” category for her height on the BMI chart.
After almost a year, Susan still had not reached her weight loss goal of 125 pounds. She and her registered dietitian decided that her weight loss goal of 125 pounds was probably an unrealistic weight for her. She could not realistically continue to decrease her calories or increase her daily activity. Additionally, Susan was lifting weights at the gym three days a week, which increased her muscle mass. And, that was a good thing.
Susan currently weighs 135 pounds and has stayed at that weight for the last 6 weeks. This was a natural weight loss plateau for her. She decided to focus her energy on maintaining her weight at 135 pounds, give or take two or three pounds.
Now, It’s Your Turn
Well, I hope you feel more confident and educated about refocusing your weight loss goal.
If your efforts to maintain your weight loss goal aren’t working, consider working with a personal trainer or consulting with a registered dietitian nutritionist. And, always appreciate the weight you’ve lost.
Whatever you do, don’t give up and go back to your old eating habits and sitting on the couch. So, take a look at what you are doing or not doing to keep your weight on track. I think that you will enjoy these posts on setting SMART goals to manage stress eating, learning to eat slowly, buying fitness equipment for your home gym.
- List 5 things that you are doing to keep your weight on track.
- List 5 things that you need to stop doing to keep your weight on track.
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