Focus on 3 things: healthy diet, right mindset and sustainable habits. This sounds very general right? I will explain you now in details.
1. Exercise often – you need to achieve energy balance, meaning you burn the same calories that you consume. How? Doing at least 30min a day of moderate physical activity and you will burn off some extra calories and increase your metabolism.
If you don’t see results, increase to 1h exercise per day.
2. Try eating breakfast every day. Most of my clients who came to my sessions, started to loose weight and then keep it in the long term simply by adding a nutritional breakfast, rather than only a coffee and empty stomach until lunch. Breakfast eaters tend to have healthier habits overall, such as exercising more and consuming more fiber and macronutrients that help you to energetic throughout the day and more willing to move your body!
3. Talking about macros… & focus on protein and carbs that play a big role in weight maintenance… be mindful of your carb intake. Try to avoid the refined carbs such as white bread/pasta and fruit juices and focus more on brown rice/pasta veggies and fruits.
And about protein, eat lots! But in small portions in each meal or even snack. Protein can help reduce appetite and promote fullness. It increases levels of certain hormones in the body that induce satiety and are important for weight regulation. Furthermore, protein requires a significant amount of energy for your body to breakfast down, meaning… eating it regularly may increase the number of calories you burn during the day. It might looks like difficult to understand this and that’s the reality.
If you eat twice a day and mainly a coffee in the morning and nothing until dinner… WRONG!!! not eating regularly will make you feel you are getting or loosing weight constantly, because you do not have a controlled timetable in your meals. If you do not split your meals during the day and wait until the dinner, I presume you might ingest as much as you can and that can lead in slow metabolism.
4. Specific exercise – resistance training, such as lifting weights, may help prevent this loss of muscle and, in turn, preserve or even improve your metabolism rate. Reduced muscle is common side effect of weight loss.
When? It is recommended to engage in strength training at least twice a week. Then you will become even stronger and it might become in a good addiction and that is when you will increase the training days per week 😀
The more muscles you have (I don’t mean big muscles but compared to your body fat), you will have a quicker metabolism, meaning you will burn more calories throughout the day.
Based on my experience as a Personal Trainer and Nutrition Advisor, that those who lift weights are more likely to keep weight off by maintaining muscle mass.
5. Eat well for ever! that way you will not have cheat days and all days will be “cheat days” because you will enjoy the food.
General advice:
Set up your 3 main meals and snacks in between, so eat often and always at the same time. Moderate exercise and eat when you have to eat, and do your life… that way will avoid to think all the time about how your weight is going on 😉
ENJOY YOUR WEIGHT MAINTENANCE
“Make it simple, constant & stick on that”
Good luck 😉
