You Lost Weight But Can Never Maintain Your Results - What Do You Do?

The most common reason people are either on or off diets all the time is because they don’t understand the concept of Maintenance.

Dieting is a fairly straight forward process, you put yourself into a calorie deficit by eating less and over time, you will lose body fat and body weight.

The main issue I see in clients is that they plan the dieting phase, but they almost NEVER plan the Maintenance phase.

If there is no exit strategy out of a fat loss phase to Maintenance, is it any wonder it becomes an all you can eat buffet phase?

You’ve worked so hard to lose body fat, it’s a simple process but not easy! Then with no plan on how to maintain your results you eventually end up back where you started, I see it and hear it all the time!

If you are working with a coach on a X-week diet with no exit strategy, please ask them how you are meant to maintain your results! If they don’t know, please find a coach who can also help you to do this important phase properly.

Your fat loss phase is only successful if you manage to maintain the results you achieve from it! I love the saying “It’s not your dream body if it’s a nightmare to maintain!!!”.

What Is Maintenance?

Maintenance is as it sounds; you maintain the body composition you have at the end of the fat loss phase. Note, I did not say you maintain the WEIGHT you were at the end of the fat loss phase!

You need to understand that you will weigh more when you move into your maintenance phase. Maintenance is not maintaining your lowest body weight; it’s maintaining your body composition and staying within a weight range that you are happy with.

When you move into maintenance the first thing your coach should do is bring your calories up, so you stop losing weight. That can be done incrementally but I prefer to bring my clients straight up to their predicted maintenance the next day!

We start by calculating your new maintenance calories. You will be in a smaller body and so your maintenance at the start of a fat loss phase will be different to the end. We monitor and adapt until your weight stabilises over time and within a range you are comfortable with. In the first week, expect your weight to go up (this is not FAT gain!) this is extra food volume, additional water being stored with carbohydrates, your muscles will start to fill with glycogen from their somewhat depleted state.

This additional weight could be anywhere from 1.5-2.5kgs and after 7-10 days it should have risen and then started to stabilise. This is a crucial time most people need coaching because people start to freak out seeing the scale number go up. Talk to yourself calmly, remember this is extra water and food and you should still look lean.

What’s the alternative? Stay in a calorie deficit forever? Or keep dragging out the deficit until you are literally on your knees? At some point your body and mind need a break and you have to come up to maintenance.

It’s also the reason I say that losing the last 1.5-2.5kg might be a waste of time because when you come up to maintenance you will gain some weight back and the juice might not be worth the squeeze in terms of losing that last bit of weight.

This is where progress photos really help. Seeing your body composition stay the same as the scale goes up in the first week or so is very reassuring.

If you find yourself saying or thinking when you end your dieting phase “Oh no, my weight has gone up so I’ve undone all my hard work I might as well eat what I like!”  You and hopefully your coach has work to do. Your coach should make it perfectly clear that the end of the fat loss phase, simply means you can now enter the Maintenance phase.

Maintenance will still feel like work! If you go down the path of thinking I’ve hit my goal and now I can eat what I like, guess what happens? Yup, you put most of the weight back on and have to do it all again!!! In maintenance you’re not going to be able to eat and drink what you like when you like. You will still have to make choices about what you indulge in and when, but you will certainly have more food freedom than in a deficit.

Maintenance also means that you don’t have to starve. You will feel hungry at times in maintenance, that’s normal! When you are hungry, you can eat something! This is about honouring your hunger (I’m not talking about emotional hunger here). When you don’t honour your hunger, you usually end up overeating at some point in the near future.

If you are having regular times in the month when you overeat and you are in a fat loss phase, you need to stop the fat loss phase and start eating at maintenance. Regular overeating is not normal and it’s a sign that something isn’t right. In my experience people who do this (who don’t have a recognised eating disorder) have been dieting too long and are now struggling to adhere. It’s time for a new strategy. I would get a client to come back up to maintenance and focus on how and why they are overeating. Once this is addressed and you don’t have a scarcity mindset around food, for most, the next fat loss phase is successful.

I ask my clients to continue to weigh themselves daily for at least 1 month. Over that time, we can see how your body responds to not being in a deficit but also making choices that keep you in a weight range you are comfortable with. When your weight starts to plateau, we know you are at True Maintenance.

I am a ONE and DONE type of coach. Do the dieting phase to the best of your ability, get in a deficit, work hard and then get out and live the rest of your life at maintenance.

If you have never had an extended period of time living at maintenance, it’s like finding your way to the promised land!

Your body will thrive in maintenance, everything in life feels better when you give your body the fuel it needs!  You should live most of your life at Maintenance. Honestly the only people who really need to cycle between a surplus and a dieting phase are professional body builders.

An unexpected benefit of living your life mostly at maintenance is that when you are well fed, the need to overeat can stop. I have seen clients lose weight as they start maintenance because the overeating episodes stop and when that happens, they are now in a calorie deficit.

My quick guide to Maintenance:

Recalculate your Maintenance calories at the end of your fat loss phase.

Monitor your weight for a month until you are consistently within the weight range you are comfortable with.

Understand your weight has to go up at the end of the fat loss phase but this is not fat gain, it’s food volume and water.

Live your best life at Maintenance and never diet again! The End x