Maintaining your fat loss
People are usually so fixated on losing weight that they dont think about the ultimate goal which is maintaining that weight loss.
This is by far the most important part.
There is no point losing weight if you then just regain it and have to lose it again.
It’s much better to do it once and then learn how to maintain it.
That means changing your life - if you see this as a 6-8 week thing, if you see your diet as a short term commitment then you will always revert back to your previous habits and re gain the weight
Think of it like this - your current body composition is a result of your habits around diet & exercise. If you don’t maintain those habits - you won’t maintain that body.
If you ask most people what a successful diet is they usually tell you losing X amount of weight or dropping X dress sizes..
It’s not - Maintenance is the definition of a successful diet. And thats not just me saying that - it’s how researchers define a successful diet too - they look at weight maintenance at 6 to 12 months after the diet.
But maintenance is hard, often harder than fat loss and this is largely psychological…
When you’ve been aiming for fat loss for a long time the transition into maintenance can be scary - most people worry about gaining weight or doing something wrong.
I’ve made a list of things you need to know about maintenance:
1) You will likely gain a little weight when you increase calories - this is not fat. It’s food volume, glycogen stores in your muscles, water.
It will only be fat if you overshoot on calories which is why for clients where fat gain is a concern I err on the side of caution and start on calories a little lower then predicted maintenance needs
2) Your maintenance calories are simply how many calories you expend in a day. This technically changes slightly every day depending on how much you move. This makes maintaining your activity level important too.
3) Averages matter.
Remember how you focused on your weekly average calories for fat loss but stayed within your set calorie range? Yeah, I would do the exact same at maintenance just with slightly more calories!
4) Use what worked for you in fat loss…
One thing that works well for most people for fat loss and maintenance is to eat less during the week when you’re busy at work and leave more to enjoy on the weekend - just make sure you’re not going to extremes on either end.
5) Maintenance isn’t that different to your fat loss phase (assuming you were working with me/ didn’t do something silly to lose fat) - you just get to eat more!
6) If you ended your diet very lean putting on a little fat is normal and healthy
7) Set some new goals - these might be performance goals because your body can do some pretty cool things when you train it and even more so when you’re not in a deficit anymore and you can focus on fuelling yourself
8) Realise all the benefits of not being in a deficit:
Some common benefits:
more energy
better mood
improved performance
increased sleep
less irritable
better concentrating
higher libido
less stress
more flexibility
9) Shift your mindset to fuelling yourself rather than fixating on calories - think about how you would eat if you wanted to look, feel and perform your best.
10) Congrats - fat loss is hard. But maintenance is harder, it’s way more impressive - this is your life now!
Make sure you have the right mindset.
There is an important distinction between feeling like you have to do something V you get to do it
You get to live in a way that makes you look, feel and perform at your best.
That is pretty cool!
One of the biggest mistakes people make - ESPECIALLY if they used weight loss drugs to lose weight is thinking maintenance will be easy.
Maintenance is often when you need the most coaching, the most reassurance and continued structure - the end of your fat loss doesn’t mean drop all of the structure and routine around your diet.
Not that much is going to change between fat loss and maintenance - you’re just going to eat a little more and likely be able to train harder should you wish to!
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