How To Get Off The Weight Loss/Gain Rollercoaster
33.3% of people are now overweight with approximately 16% of the UK population on a diet – 80% of whom will regain any weight they manage to lose.
There is no secret or quick fix to sustained weight loss. Weight maintenance is simply down to instilling healthy habits that are easily integrated into your current lifestyle. Making simple and subtle changes are what makes all the difference, and ensuring their convenience enables you to sustain these positive changes as a permanent fixture in your life.
Reasons for weight gain:
- Unhealthy habits – 40% of our behaviour is subconscious
- Environment – there are always special offers on convenience foods high in salt, fat and sugar
- Hormones & emotions – We deal with fluctuating hormones and emotions on a daily basis, many of which we deal with through food. Not only that, once you have lost weight, appetite increasing hormones increase
- Mindset & attitude – Falling off the healthy wagon is inevitable from time to time. Hopping back on ensures continued healthy living, whereas abandoning the idea leads to continued weight gain
Regaining any weight you may have lost is a common occurrence. We are significantly tied to food emotionally and habitually. Breaking any cycles and habits that encourage weight gain is essential, and instigating and creating new ones in place of them in order to sustain a healthy weight.
Our bodies naturally resist weight loss – this is a survival instinct that isn’t as important as it was hundreds of years ago. However, one thing that has evolved is our increasingly weaker signals telling us that we are full.
Convenience foods are absolutely everywhere; the majority of which contain high levels of salt, fat and sugar. This therefore means that we now need to exert more self-control than ever before in order to avoid falling into their trap.
It is only natural that we have the occasional slip-up or indulgent meal out, but many will then ditch the ‘diet’ and continue with the previous behaviours that they were trying to avoid. An occasional setback is not the end of the road, and is simply part of life. Climbing back onto the healthy eating horse as soon as possible will ensure you get back onto the straight and narrow, not allowing excess weight to creep back on.
One study has shown that if you lose 6kg over a 4 year period and then regain 5kg within that same span of time, you will still have reduced your risk of developing diabetes in the future.
