The goal of any good weight-loss management plan is permanence. However, it's easy to find yourself stuck in a circular pattern you can’t break free from. When you clothe yourself in black-and-white thinking and focus on the quickest way to lose weight, going "off" of your diet usually means returning to old eating habits. But that defeats the purpose. To create an effective plan, try replacing that yo-yo mindset with a better option.
A Good Diet for Weight Loss Stops the Cycle
A good diet takes your likes, dislikes, and lifestyle into account, but using a step-by-step process to make life changes slowly and carefully can ensure success. That doesn’t mean a fast weight-loss diet won’t work, but yo-yo dieting patterns need to be addressed. While feelings of deprivation, emotional eating patterns, food sensitivities and intolerances all contribute, trying to deal with too many variables can send you running back to familiar eating habits.
When dieting is tackled in chunks rather than trying to change everything all at once, you can face, change, or eliminate behaviors, individual foods, and patterns interfering with fat loss.
Think About Taking a Full Diet Break
An effective plan works with any type of diet. It doesn’t matter if it’s a low-calorie diet, a low-carbohydrate diet, or a more balanced approach. Pick any weight-loss plan that works for you. What matters is finding something you can stick with short term.
The key to permanent weight management isn’t finding a program you can follow the rest of your life. The key to permanency is learning how to maintain what you've lost. Getting rid of body fat is the easy part; keeping the weight off is what’s hard. The way to stop yo-yo dieting is to add a break to your normal routine every 8 to 12 weeks, but to make that break a real part of your diet. Moving to a maintenance phase and dieting in steps gives you the time to learn how to be successful long term.
Weigh In Daily
To be effective, the scale needs to become your friend rather than your enemy. By using daily weigh-ins, and keeping your weight within a very tight margin, you can break the yo-yo cycle. However, a break doesn’t give you a license to eat everything you want, whenever you want. Consider it breathing room; a time when you can practice eating at a maintenance level of calories.
If you’ve been following a low-carb diet, some weight gain occurs when you begin eating carbohydrates again. Gains of 5 to 15 pounds are common, depending on the amount of lean body mass you have. This gain comes from the body refilling its glycogen stores. It’s not body fat. So take the expected glycogen gain into account before setting your weight margin. Give your body 4 or 5 days to stabilize first. If you’ve been following a more balanced diet, glycogen stores won’t be depleted, so weight maintenance limits can be set right away.
It’s best to keep things tightly controlled, generally within 2 to 3 pounds. While some diet maintenance plans have used 5 pounds as the upper limit, I've found that keeping the margin smaller can make daily corrections easier.
For Permanent Weight Loss Stay Within Weight Limits
The level of maintenance calories that results in permanent weight loss varies. Generally, 12 to 15 times your current body weight is a good place to start. However, most dieters under-estimate activity and over-estimate calories. That makes weighing daily a better option. As long as your weight stays within set limits, there is no need to worry about calories or activity level.
However, when weight spills over the upper 3-pound limit, adjustments must be made that very day. Most maintenance problems occur when dieters either fail to weigh daily or procrastinate corrections. Problems also begin to occur when basic nutritional principles are thrown out. While diet breaks should include a few missed foods, the foundation of a good maintenance diet includes proper nutrition.
Make sure to eat an adequate amount of protein to keep you full and lots of vegetables for fiber and nutrients. Then spend whatever calories you have left on fruits, whole grains, and dietary fats, adjusting intake to whatever your maintenance weight will allow.
A Good Weight-Management Plan Results in Effective Weight Loss
The key to a good diet for weight loss is to have a weight-management diet that focuses on permanence. However, you can easily find yourself caught in the never ending cycle of being either “on” or “off” of a diet. When life interferes, or when you need a break from the restriction, moving into a maintenance phase and using maintenance techniques to control your current weight will stop the cycle that interferes with success. Weighing in and making food intake corrections daily, eating adequate protein, and limiting carbohydrates and dietary fats to whatever weight allows enables a dieter to achieve permanent, effective weight loss one step at a time.
Sources:
A., Jim, Recovery From Compulsive Eating: A Complete Guide to the Twelve Step Program, Hazelden Publishing, March 1994
Katahn, Martin, The T-Factor Diet, W. W. Norton & Company, January 2001
McDonald, Lyle, A Guide To Flexible Dieting: How Being Less Strict With Your Diet Can Make It Work Better, Lyle McDonald Publishing, 2005
Disclaimer: The information contained in this article is for educational purposes only and should not be used for diagnosis or to guide treatment without the opinion of a health professional. Any reader who is concerned about his or her health should contact a doctor for advice.
Vickie Ewell - Vickie has worked with autistic individuals for 9 years. She has celiac disease and specializes in gfcf living.
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