I’m Afraid I’ll Regain in Maintenance!

Dear Kayla,

IF has worked very well for me. Iā€™ve lost about 25 pounds and am at a normal BMI and a comfortable weight. Iā€™m feeling healthier than I have in years. My question is about maintenance. Iā€™m so fearful of gaining weight since I donā€™t want to lose any more if I continue on IF. How do I eat to stabilize my weight and not gain again? I donā€™t want to Yo-Yo my weight, which I have done in the past. 

Signed,

Ophelia

ā€‹Dear Ophelia,

Congratulations on hitting your goal weight and improving your health! Successful maintenance is very much like the weight loss phase, which you just crushed. Make sure you do these three things: 

  1. Set a maintenance range goal and write a plan.
  2. Track your progress.
  3. Make tweaks as necessary.

A maintenance range of five to ten pounds works well for most people. Write your chosen range down, so that you can remind yourself where you want to be. Now comes the fun part: alter your current plan so that you stop losing weight, and you hover in that range. This means loosening the reins ever so slightly. Think ā€œtweakā€ not ā€œmajor overhaul.ā€ 

It will take some trial and error to find the sweet spot. If your new tweaks make your weight trend upward, youā€™ll see it happening and you can nip it in the bud. If your weight is decreasing, you can tweak your plan again to make it a bit more lax. Keep tweaking until your weight stabilizes.

I donā€™t have the specifics of your particular plan, but Iā€™ll give you an example of what I mean by a tweak. Letā€™s say you were doing an 18:6 Monday – Saturday, and you take Sundays off. A tweak is changing it to a 16:8 and keeping everything else the same. Your tracking tells you if your change is inadequate, just enough, or too much. Make notes as you go along until you find the plan that works. Keep this somewhere handy so that you can refer to it later on.  

The big mistake people make when they hit their goal weight is they stop having a goal and a plan, and they stop tracking. This is a recipe for weight regain. This had been my pattern until 2016, when I learned that keeping off the weight isnā€™t luck. Weight regain always happens for a reason. It happens when you fall back into bad habits. To prevent it, stay in those good habits you created when you were losing weight. Keep holding yourself accountable by having a goal, a plan, and continuing to track. If you do this, you have nothing to fear.

Sincerely,

Kayla

Originally published June 6, 2023.

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