You start a diet, lose weight and are finally comfortable and happy with how you look and feel — so you stop the dieting and fall back into your old routine.
A couple of weeks later, the excess weight that was gone begins to creep back.
And your continuous cycle of frustration with the scale begins again.
Is this what you go through all the time?
Don’t worry, it’s not just you. Everyone goes through this.
But the good thing is, there are ways to prevent yo-yo dieting from happening over and over again.
So, if you want all of your hard weight loss work to have a long-term effect, follow these seven tips from women who used to weigh over 200 pounds – lost the weight and have successfully kept it off for years.
1. Don’t eliminate any foods (completely)
Instead of banning foods altogether from your diet, which leads to binging later on, find a way to fit them into your healthy lifestyle.
Eat your favorite foods in moderation or find healthy alternatives for some of your must-have junk foods.
2. Make healthy living lifestlye, not just a passing fad
Getting in the habit of working out every morning or eating dinner at the same time each night are just a few examples of habits that can help lead to a healthy lifestyle.
Making it part of your routine versus a temporary fix, allows you to develop more long-term habits.
3. Learn Portion Control
The most basic formula for weight loss is to consume fewer calories than you burn.
If you are practicing portion control, no food is truly off limits and it’ll be hard to overeat.
4. Get Some Exercise
Like it or not, you need to work out.
If you continue to be physically active and make it a priority in your everyday routine, you will achieve your goals and be able to maintain them.
Combining exercise with a healthy diet leads to great results.
5. Cook at Home
Cooking in your own kitchen allows you to make your favorite foods while controlling the ingredients and portion sizes.
You can also take your favorite traditional recipe, and slim it down with healthier ingredients.
6. Plan For Meals and Snacks Ahead of Time
If you have a busy week coming up, preparing healthy meals and snacks for each day on Sunday can keep you from making unhealthy food decisions later in the week.
7. Stay Hydrated
Drinking water helps to flush out toxins from your body, prevent headaches, increase alertness and even keep hunger pangs at bay.
8. Get Proper Sleep
Numerous studies have shown that getting less than 5–6 hours of sleep per night is associated with increased incidence of obesity. There are several reasons behind this.
Research suggests that insufficient and poor-quality sleep slows down the process in which the body converts calories to energy, called metabolism. When metabolism is less effective, the body may store unused energy as fat. In addition, poor sleep can increase the production of insulin and cortisol, which also prompt fat storage.
How long and how deep someone sleeps also affects the regulation of the appetite-controlling hormones leptin and ghrelin. Leptin sends signals of fullness to the brain while ghrelin tells your brain you’re hungry.
Without a properly functioning leptin and ghrelin, you’re constantly hungry and nothing you eat will ever make you full.
So, sleep more and sleep well.