Learn How To Maintain Your Weight Loss

Why Weight Maintenance Is Hard 0:00

Dr. Francavilla here. And I want to talk to you about weight maintenance. So one thing that is really important is to understand that when you lose weight, it is very hard. And we've talked about some of the reasons why it's hard to lose weight. But even more important to understand is that keeping weight off can be just as hard, if not harder, than losing it. Our body is really designed to maintain weight or if not be slightly gaining, or for some of us, gaining a lot throughout our life. Evolutionarily, that made sense for us to store fat.

And so when we start to lose weight, our body takes it as a really bad sign. And it does things to adapt and to keep that weight on. We've talked about how our hunger goes up, satiety goes down,

Long-Term Habits That Support Maintenance 0:52

and our metabolic rate goes down. Our body is adjusting to that weight loss, and we're going to have to fight that long term in order to maintain weight. So one of the things I like to say is whatever you do to lose weight, you're going to have to keep doing. This is why doing a crash diet for a few weeks, or trying keto for just a few weeks really doesn't make sense. We need to pick things that we can stick with more or less long term. There is a database called the National Weight Control Registry that has tracked people who've lost at least 30 pounds and kept it off for more than a year.

These are people who weren't taking medications, and this data is pretty old at this point. We have lots of data that continues to be collected for decades, and there are some key findings of people who've lost a fair amount of weight and kept it off long term. One of those key findings is that 78% of people who've kept weight off are eating breakfast every day. So I always kind of say I'm team breakfast. I find that for most of my patients, eating breakfast most days makes sense. Another key finding is that about 75% of people weigh themselves at least once a week.

So tracking your weight, tracking your body composition can be a really important technique in order to maintaining weight. You don't need to stress about it, right? But if you see your weight starting to go back up, that's a check in with yourself. Am I doing the things I was doing that were working? And if you're still doing all the same things and it's not working, it might be time to check in with an expert and figure out why you're struggling.

Registry Findings: Breakfast, Weigh-Ins, and Activity 2:25

But if it turns out you're now eating dessert every night, or you stopped exercising as much as you were before, now you know why this scale is going up, and you can go back to that habit that was working for you. This is an interesting one. 62% of people watch less TV, and if you're watching less TV, you're probably moving more. You're probably engaging more in the community. You might have less stress, and you're probably snacking less in front of the TV. So decreasing TV time. And then one of my favorite ones is that 90% of people are exercising on more, on average an hour a day, mostly by walking.

So exercise really is. And you've heard me say it before. The secret sauce to maintaining weight. And then the final key thing is that people are eating a consistent eating pattern throughout the whole week. So they're not sort of eating really healthy all week and doing whatever they want on the weekend. They're continuing the same healthy eating pattern, whether it's plant based or keto or something in between. They are continuing that on a daily basis. Instead of picking and choosing when to use it.

Another thing we see from this database is that once someone has kept the weight off for two years, the chance of regaining that weight reduces by 50%. So the longer you keep weight off, the longer you're likely to be able to do that. And one of the other really big key components here, which I can't hammer home enough, is that the higher the level of physical activity, the much more likely people were to have that long term weight loss. So in my exercise talk, you heard me speak about the importance of exercise.

We're shooting for at least 150 minutes a week, if not closer to 300.

Consistency, Exercise, and Key Takeaways 3:59

very key to our health. Very key to health maintenance and weight maintenance. And if you are looking for a, resistance training program to add on to say, you're walking so that you get all that functional movement in and you keep that lean muscle mass, go check out my program, GLP strong. that is a great tool for you to increase your movement in your activity level. But key points for weight maintenance is whatever you do, you're probably going to have to keep doing breakfast. Maybe keep eating.

A similar pattern of food every day is key. Watching less TV, moving, maybe moving a lot more, and then weighing yourself regularly, which may or may not include body fat or composition, but checking in. Are you continuing to reach that goal is another habit that's really helpful for people long term.