How to Maintain Weight

There is so much discussion on how to lose weight that the question on how to maintain weight is grossly ignored.  Yet, if you were to look strictly at the statistics of the number of people who lost weight and kept it off, it is a little disheartening. 

Approximately 95-97% of all people will fail to maintain their weight after achieving their weight loss goals.  So indeed this is an important topic of discussion.

Here is a generalized way to understand the difference between weight loss and weight maintenance. Weight loss is 75% psychology and 25% mechanics - learning what is healthy nutritious food and eating it in amounts that lead to consistent weight loss, as well as exercising or not in a way that works for you. Maintaining weight is 100% psychology because you already know what you should eat and in what amounts.  There is no new information to know in regards to exercise, diet or nutrition unless you are just furthering your education.  But, it is not necessary for maintaining your weight.  

Unless…

…if your diet was so extreme that you find yourself without a working knowledge on what is healthy and how much you should be eating, in other words you are ill-equipped to begin living health as a lifestyle.   It would benefit you to look into continued information on diet and nutrition.     This is why so many diets out there make no sense and have such a high percentage of their clients gaining the weight back…they are too extreme and have them eating ridiculous types and incredibly little amounts of food, amazingly many of these are found in hospitals or are doctor supervised!

Moving forward, regardless of the diet you used to lose the weight,  it would be inaccurate thinking if your idea for maintaining your weight was to quit on your diet completely.  To go back to the very habits that caused the weight gain in the first place and attempt to control how much you eat is a recipe for disaster…you might as well pull out your “big clothes” and start banging your head against a wall right now. What is necessary for a while is keeping your health and weight in your present mind consciousness.  For how long… for as long as it takes for your new healthy lifestyle to move into your unconscious mind.  The second it does, that is when the entire system will run itself.  That is correct, when all of the new healthy patterns; what you eat, when you eat, how much you eat, and daily exercise have gone from conscious disciplined thought to become ingrained habits in your unconscious mind, that is when you can relax. 

If you have not learned how to accelerate this process then you may have to forever run yourself through checks and balances.   On the other hand if you learn some key strategies that accelerates the formation of new unconscious habits, freedom from policing yourself can be yours very fast,  learning these inner-strength strategies will lead to easy permanent weight management.

 Until then you have got to be aware of yourself and the priority of health in your life.  Take the time to create a process to monitor your weight, your exercise and your food choices.  It’s as easy as… in the morning; weigh or take a look at yourself in the mirror, plan your days meals and what exercise you will do in advanced, and in the evening re-evaluate your follow through.

About:  Michael Mountain is a transformational author on health, weight loss & personal growth and is featured on Amazon.com. He is the author of the Ultimate Fat Loss Solution Diet which is available presently free of charge at www.michael-mountain.com.   He is also the author of Mindset for Weight Loss transformational program - a revolutionary step-by-step program designed to provide the “inner-strength strategies” to take any diet and make it effective for permanent weight loss.  This program allowed him to end his own personal 20 year struggle with weight and poor health!  You can sign up to receive his blog updates on weight loss and motivation at www.michael-mountain.com