What Does Weight Maintenance Mean?
Are you trying to lose or perhaps gain weight? Well, weight loss and gain are hot topics among health-conscious people. Whether it’s how to accomplish it or when to do it, everyone is talking about it.
As per a 2016 report (USA), 23% of the respondents stated they were trying to maintain their weight. However, what does weight maintenance mean?
We are always on the lookout for changing our bodies in different ways to become healthy and fit. For that purpose, proper maintenance of weight is crucial.
So it’s time to check out, what weight maintenance means, its benefits, and why it’s such a wonderful stage to be in.
How Does Weight Maintenance Work?
Although you won’t find an official definition of weight maintenance, we can still get to know its meaning.
Basically, when you are continuing your regular life without any changes in your weight, it is called weight maintenance.
So whether it’s gaining or losing weight, weight maintenance means stopping.
Rather than making big changes, weight maintenance allows you to maintain the weight of your body.
This phase is crucial for you if you lose or increase some amount of weight. Maintaining your weight will keep you in the exact shape that you want.
Suppose you’ve lost some weight. However, now you either want to increase or decrease your current weight.
In that case, you will have to maintain your weight with specific activities, habits, and mindsets.
Reaching Your Ideal Weight Goal
You may have been performing weight maintenance for the majority of your life. If your weight has been constant for as long as you can remember, this is weight maintenance.
In addition, you can maintain your weight after a period of significant volatility.
Let’s say we gain a pound or two. Does this suggest we’re no longer in the weight-maintenance phase? That’s not the case.
Since we are humans, our weight will naturally vary slightly in one direction.
The argument is that we don’t experience considerable change while we maintain our weight, but you may notice slight changes.
What is A Healthy Weight for You?
It’s perhaps the most frequently asked question, and there are numerous approaches to answering it.
For example, experts frequently analyze metabolism, lean body mass, weight history, BMI, and body fat percentage before responding to a client.
The lean body mass and body fat ratio are among the more essential components of body composition when looking at weight solely from a medical standpoint.
However, recommended values differ widely based on gender and age, and good body composition measurements might be difficult.
You must visit your doctor or a trained nutritionist to figure out what is ideal for you when it comes to weight management and maintenance.
3 Tips On Weight Maintenance for Effective Results
Let’s talk about how to maintain your weight now that we’ve started talking about it. What do you do when steadily losing or gaining weight?
Everyone’s path to weight loss and maintenance is unique. It is crucial to understand your journey and know what it took to bring you to where you are now.
1. Weight Maintenance and Stress
Stress has a significant influence on our daily behaviors and decisions. Although some amount of stress is not a hassle, severe, chronic stress causes far more harm than benefit.
This type of stress, for example, releases a little too much cortisol, which might mess with our appetite signals.
Isn’t it the best way to keep your weight in check? Essentially, I’m telling you all of this to emphasize how critical it is to manage stress to maintain a healthy weight.
Stress management isn’t a frivolous or pointless pastime; it’s critical to your health and well-being.
Whatever works for you in stress management — from yoga to marathon running — do it!
However, it would help if you first devoted some time to finding a pastime or activity that can divert your attention away from your biggest concerns.
2. Habits And Motivations
The habits that helped you achieve and maintain a healthy weight are the same ones that will help you maintain it.
Keep up the excellent work if you’ve begun incorporating more vegetables and fiber into your diet.
Don’t give up spinning on Monday mornings or swimming on weekends if you’ve been doing them for a while.
It’s easy to lose concentration or motivation once you’ve attained your ideal weight. So what will keep you motivated once you’ve achieved your goal?
This is the point at which you must pause and reflect.
Consider why you did it, how you did it, and all the effort you put in. Why did you set out to achieve this goal in the first place?
Then why did you use it to get there, and are you going to use it to stay there?
3. Eating Habits
Our connection with food typically changes and evolves as our lives change and evolve.
Food plays a role in how we feel when we’re joyful and when we’re sad. Knowing yourself and your connection with food might help you stay on track to achieve your goals.
Take the time to learn about yourself and your eating habits. For example, what effect does your mood have on your eating habits? Do you ever find comfort in food?
For example, some people find eating helpful when they are upset or angry.
On the other hand, some like to eat more when they are happy.
Understanding how your mind and emotions influence your eating patterns might help you navigate your diet when life throws you for a loop.
Benefits of Weight Maintenance
For some people, losing weight is hard, but keeping it off is even more difficult—most people who lose a lot of weight gain it back 2-3 years later.
One explanation concerning regaining the weight is that people who reduce their calorie intake to lose weight see a decline in the rate at which their bodies burn calories.
For months, this makes losing weight increasingly difficult.
A healthy weight proportional to your height benefits you in many aspects, including:
- lower cholesterol levels
- blood sugar levels
- lower blood pressure
- less stress on bones and joints
- less work for the heart.
Therefore, it is vital to maintain weight loss to obtain health benefits. You can achieve weight loss targets by changing your diet, eating habits, and exercise. Then, in extreme circumstances, people turn to bariatric surgery.
Weight loss And Weight Maintenance Strategies
The weight-loss tactics can also help you lose weight and keep it off:
1. You can aid weight maintenance by adopting effective support systems during the weight loss process.
2. Physical activity is essential for weight loss maintenance. Maintaining weight loss requires burning 1,500 to 2,000 calories per week of physical activity.
Adults should engage in moderate to strenuous physical activity for at least 40 minutes 3-4 times a week.
3. A balanced diet and exercise are critical weight-loss and weight-maintenance practices.
It may take some time and effort to determine how changing food consumption and exercise levels affect weight. This is something that a nutritionist may assist you with.
To maintain weight, you must continue to apply behavioral techniques. Furthermore, you need to be aware of eating as a stress response.
On the contrary, maintaining weight loss requires attention to eating choices and activity.
Furthermore, recognizing situations such as unpleasant moods and interpersonal challenges and adopting alternate coping methods rather than eating to deal with them will help you avoid reverting to previous habits.
Summing It Up
Your experience with weight loss and maintenance is unique to you. However, whether you’re an old pro or fresh to the game, the weight maintenance phase is a lovely place to be.
It’s not just free to accept yourself completely and recognize that you’re at a perfectly healthy weight for yourself, but it may also show that all of your hard work is paying off.
See Also
Vegetarian Meal Plan for Weight Gain
What to Eat Before Workout on Keto Diet
Weight Gain Smoothie Recipes Without Protein Powder
2000 Calorie Meal Plan for Weight Gain
Blenders to Make Protein Shakes
7 Day Smoothie Weight Loss Plan
References:
https://www.webmd.com/diet/news/
https://www.webmd.com/diet/obesity/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/