10 Tips to Maintain Weight Loss and Avoid Weight Regain

Keep a journal

There are a lot of people who can help you lose weight (your friends, family, doctors, personal trainers, walking buddies, etc.) but at the end of the day it is up to YOU and only YOU. So YOU need to hold YOURSELF accountable.

The best way to do that is to keep a journal of your progress. This isn’t just a standard food journal. Don’t get bogged down in the details of measuring the calories so you can write it in your journal (unless of course this helps you!) This is journal so that you don’t push your health and wellness to the back of your mind to think about only when everything else is accomplished that you are responsible for.

You can’t do your job at work, and take care of your family if you don’t take care of yourself first. By writing in this journal every day you will force yourself to focus on you. Even if only for 5 minutes a day when you wake up and when you go to bed. Write down a goal for the day when you wake up. At the end of the day write down what you did well, what you can improve tomorrow, what you ate, and what you did for exercise.

See a life coach, therapist or counselor

Let’s be honest, everyone could benefit from a therapist, psychologist, or a credentialed life coach. Even the most successful people in the world would benefit. And no one wants to admit they have a therapist. That just means more people have a psychologist or therapist than you realize.

Many people say they don’t have time. But again, you can’t take care of everything else in your life if you can’t take care of yourself. So make time, just one hour a week. And maybe one of the first things you can discuss is ways to organize your life so you can make more time for yourself.

Overeating can occur for a variety of reasons: addiction, depression, and anxiety, are the most common reasons. Depression and anxiety are likely to get worse after bariatric surgery before they get better. Many patients tell me they are depressed because of their weight, and they eat because they are depressed so they get stuck in a cycle. No surgery or pill will fix that. We all can use a little help being the best version of ourselves. If you are trying to lose weight, take all the help you can get.

Follow-up with your health care team

Statistically, patients who follow up with their surgeon, dietitian and medical weight loss doctor as scheduled for 2 years after surgery are much more likely to lose weight and keep it off. This is for several reasons. Your healthcare team will hold you accountable.

You will get weighed at each visit. They will ask you what is changing that is causing you to regain weight or stop losing weight. All attention will be focused on you for those 15-30 minutes.  Don’t be scared of it. They want you to succeed so use that time to evaluate how you are doing and what you can improve.  In addition, there may be a medical reason that you aren’t losing weight. Or a quick substitute of a commonly eaten food that will help.

Plus, there is no one pill, one diet, or one surgery that will make you lose weight. If that were true no one would ever struggle with weight loss. Attack the problem at all angles. If you are having a surgery for weight loss, that doesn’t mean you won’t also benefit from a medication to help curb cravings or help you lose weight.

We all know that with surgery we have to change how we eat, so it can make sense to see a dietitian, but we also have to change the way we think too.  See a therapist if you need additional support. Weight gain is multifactorial, so the solution should be multifactorial too. See your surgeon, your medical doctor, your dietitian, and your therapist. Have a whole team working towards your weight loss goal!

Exercise

There is no way around this one. It just has to be done. But don’t let it overwhelm you!

Exercise does not have to mean joining a busy gym with young people in spandex, or training for a marathon. It just means 30 minutes, 5 times a week, of doing something to elevate your heart rate.  Put your kids in a stroller or wagon and go for a walk. Pushing or pulling them will give you an even better work out! Walk up and down a big hill in your neighborhood or around your local school’s track. Ride a stationary bike for 30 minutes while watching your favorite show every night. Get your spouse to go for a walk after dinner and use that time as exercise, reconnecting with your spouse, and avoiding mindless eating after dinner.

Share your goals with friends and family

Everyone can agree that smoking is an addiction and very difficult to quit. Losing weight is no different except it’s HARDER! Smoking is bad for your health in many ways. Being overweight is bad for your health too, but you still have to eat. So it’s even more difficult, and even confusing, than smoking cessation.  But, think about people who try to quit smoking.  It’s almost impossible to quit smoking if your spouse also smokes.

Get your spouse and immediate family to get on the bandwagon of healthy eating. It will be much harder for you to eat healthy if there is still junk food in the house for your kids and spouse. Even if they don’t need to lose weight, they still don’t need junk food.

If you were quitting smoking you would avoid going out for a smoke break with your friends at work. So if you are trying to lose weight, don’t go out to lunch to the same fast food restaurant with your friends every day. Don’t avoid your friends; just get them to go to a different restaurant and eat a healthier meal with you.

If you were quitting smoking, you would tell your family and friends so they could help you avoid cigarettes and remind you of your goals. Don’t hide behind your goal of weight loss. Don’t be afraid to tell people you are trying to lose weight because you are afraid you might fail.  Because then you will fail because you will have no one to help keep you accountable for succeeding. Share your goals with friends and family and your strategies for meeting those goals. You never know, they may have the same goals and been too afraid themselves to talk to anyone about it.

If you were quitting smoking, you would avoid places, activities and other habits that you associate with smoking. For example you wouldn’t go to the same bar where everyone smokes on the patio during happy hour. So, don’t go to the same bar where everyone eats fried appetizers for happy hour. Find a different activity to do instead. Go for a walk, find a new hobby, and drive home on a different route so you don’t drive past your favorite fast-food restaurant.

Weigh yourself weekly to help maintain weight loss

The problem won’t go away if you ignore it. Not weighing yourself won’t change the fact that you aren’t losing weight, or that you are gaining weight. It will just mean you won’t realize it until you have regained 50 pounds instead of 10.

Catch the weight gain before it’s a problem so it doesn’t feel overwhelming when you have to change something.  And then think to yourself, what has been different this week from the week before that may have led me to gain weight. It will be easier to identify the cause and rectify it.

Avoid your 2 worst previous habits

One habit leads to another. So don’t get overwhelmed thinking of everything you want to change. Just pick a top two.

For many people avoiding soda will not only help them not take in the calories from the soda but it will also make it easier to avoid other sugary foods because your taste buds won’t be so accustomed to the extreme sweetness.

Also, if you start exercising, not only will you burn calories, but you won’t feel as tired the next day so you will be more likely to exercise.

Avoid fried and fast food

Simple and easy. It’s hard to say “I’m going to eat healthy” and then have to pick and choose what to eat around broad guidelines.  Instead, just avoid all fried foods and fast food.  No thought needed, and no excuse or justification possible.

Avoid processed sugars

Not as simple and easy as #8, but still straight forward. Adjust your taste buds by avoiding processed sugar. Also, most foods that have processed sugars don’t have much nutritional value in them. So, you will feel hungry again quickly because your body is still looking for that nutrition.  If it comes in a box, ask yourself if you really need that food.

Recognize how far you have come

Don’t downplay your successes. I had a patient who weighed over 300 pounds at a height of 5’3”  Her only goal was to get to a weight of 199 pounds. She couldn’t remember when she last weighed in the “100’s.” One year after surgery she weighed 195 pounds and was ecstatic! She was off all her other medications including her chronic narcotics and her CPAP machine. She made a goal of weighing 175 pounds at her next appointment. 

When I saw her a few months later she weighed 190 pounds and was in a complete depression. She felt she had failed and should just “give up” because she couldn’t do it. I had to remind her how far she had come. She had actually come past her only goal at the beginning because she had already succeeded. She was just going for the cherry on top at this point.

Similarly, I had another patient who also felt depressed about her “lack” of successful weight loss. But, her psychologist saw her as doing amazing with her weight loss. Her psychologist took a picture of her every week for three months; one picture at each weekly appointment. When the three months were over, she showed me the pictures. The patient was amazed at how different she looked. She just couldn’t appreciate it because she saw herself every day and didn’t notice the change. She has also gone on to lose more than 100 pounds.