‘M’ is for ‘maintenance’

Let’s say you do a fantastic job of staying on your diet of choice and losing weight.  What’s going to happen when you reach your target weight?  I hope it will be time for a celebration, but will you have got there by sheer determination with a specific date, size, event in mind?  If so, what happens after the event?

If you achieved your weight goals because you’ve decided it’s ok to do so then maintaining your new shape, size and weight will be very straight forward and will involve little or no effort.  However, if it’s a real slog sticking to your diet and you resent being on it, or are not 100% committed then you are simply attempting to put a sticking plaster over a symptom of the real problem (the reason you over eat, binge eat or yo-yo diet to begin with).  Unfortunately all that will happen IF you achieve your goals is a return to your old eating habits and therefore a return to your previous (if not bigger) size.

In order to succeed it is vital you understand why you binge eat, over eat, under eat or yo-yo diet in the first place.  When you understand that your weight, size and shape goals will be so much easier to achieve and maintenance is not a word you’ll need to worry about as it will happen naturally.

For help getting to the bottom of the problem check out the How Many Calories Toolkit

Successful dieters achieve their desired weight because they feel good, not because they feel bad.

Whatever weight you are today you will make a difference by saying “I’m proud of who I am”

Many dieters have an upper weight that they hate so much it makes them go on a diet to lose weight. But until they reach that level they are not motivated enough to do something serious about it.

I need to tell you this very clearly: this motivation does not work

It sometimes works short term but never long term.

Imagine you had a friend who was ill and was waiting until they got really bad before they would go to the doctor. What would you say to them?

So before you have to get that bad to fail once more please decide to do something different.

The Toolkit explains exactly what does work so you can stop yo-yoing forever.

Deadly middle-aged spread weight

Don’t get complacent about creeping weight gain, warn scientists – it could cut your chances of a healthy old age by nearly 80 per cent.

Until now the proud boast of a middle aged woman who can say she has been the same weight all her life, might have been dismissed as little more than vanity by those not similarly blessed (or as careful with calories).

However scientists from Harvard University argue that there are real health benefits to be gained from maintaining a stable weight. Their study, published in the British Medical Journal, reveals that the more weight you put on from the age of 18 until middle age, the less chance you have of a long and healthy life.

They analysed data based on the comprehensive bi-annual monitoring of more than 17,000 middle-aged women in the United States as part of the Nurses Health Study.

The researchers defined ‘healthy survival’ as living to the age of 70 or older, while being free of major chronic diseases and with good cognitive, physical and mental health. By comparison, their definition of ‘usual survival’ referred to those who survived to the age of 70 or older but did not meet these criteria.

They defined slim women as those with a body mass index (BMI) of under 22.9 and obese women as those with a BMI of 30+. The latter group’s chances of surviving into a healthy old age were slashed by 79 per cent as compared with the slim women, the study found. Women whose weight continued to increase after the age of 18 faced a reduction of five per cent for each kilo gained.

However, if you were slender at 18 but are a little more portly now, it’s not a cause for celebration. If you’ve gained 10 kilos by middle age, you may also have reduced your chances of making it into a healthy old age by up to 59 per cent.

The authors say their study shows the importance of maintaining a stable healthy weight from young adulthood onwards.

Commenting on the study’s findings, the National Obesity Forum’s Dr David Haslam says:

“We live in a time when life expectancy is increasing due to improvements in the environment and medical science, but we’re now learning that due to the rise in obesity levels the trend may be about to reverse.

“The current adult population of the UK will lose a cumulative 100,000,000 years of life due to excess weight, and the only way for someone to avoid excess risk of illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease is to start lean, and stay lean, but for the rest of us it emphasises the importance of simple dietary measures, and especially physical activity, in order to stay as healthy as possible.”