We constantly hear on social media, and in talks with our friends how ‘diets don’t work’ – diets do work (if you do them properly), and it is possible to lose weight for good!

In this article I will share with you HOW to lose weight for good, and what is going wrong in your weight loss efforts.

The Weight Loss/Regain Cycle

This is the cycle all women I support have been through – they lose weight, then put it right back on again. Do this a few times, and you’ll probably feel defeated and start buying into all that talk around diets not working, and how you can’t lose weight and keep it off.

How dieting works in the body

When you diet, you’re lowering your daily calories and/or increasing daily expenditure by moving more, and this ‘gap’ in calorie intake will lead to bodyfat reduction. Essentially, your body uses your fat stores to make up for the missing calories.

Your metabolism is what drives this motor, and you requires a certain amount of food to fulfil your bodies biological needs – heart beating, moving your arms, using your brain, maintaining healthy hormones, etc.

If you stick to a healthy calorie deficit for an amount of time you will lose weight – it’s just what the body does. The body-fat in your fat cells can be used for energy in order to fill that calorie gap.

How I help my clients lose weight

For my clients, it’s all about doing the least amount of activity, and with the highest amount of food, whilst still losing fat.

If you diet too hard or for too long, or you diet when you’re already in good shape, it’s highly likely you’ll gain the weight back and quickly, because your body is concerned with your survival. Likewise if you train too hard and can’t maintain the routine, your body will gain the fat back in that instance too.

So it’s about getting the balance right, otherwise it will look like this;

Personally, I’ve never had a client stick to their deficit and not lose weight. This is because I program their food and nutrition in the right way. I also support them back to a healthy place post diet, as the post dieting period is just as important as the diet, if you want the weight to stay off.

This post won’t cover how to do that (too complex, and we are focussing on why you gain it back), but it will cover why you gain weight once you are successful in losing weight, so if you’re doing it yourself, you can prevent it next time.

If you want support in losing weight, check out my post How to Burn Fat (and Keep it Off).

There are MANY reasons why you gain weight after a dieting period, and I will cover them briefly here. It involves your metabolism, lifestyle, attitude, and the type of diet or activity you did to lose the fat in the first place.

You want to be mindful of metabolic adaptation

When you diet, your metabolism lowers to adapt to your new calorie intake. This is because your body likes to keep things ‘safe’, and fat stores under your skin are not a threat to your survival. In fact, if your diet is terrible and your nutrient stores are low, your body won’t want to lose the fat as it feels it is in some kind of famine.

If you usually eat 2500 calories/day, and you diet on 1900 calories/day, your body will use body-fat to acquire the missing 600 calories. But, after 6-8 weeks your metabolic rate will decline in order to preserve itself. Instead of 2500 calories/day to maintain weight, the new requirement may be 2250. If you go back to eating 2500 calories/day or more after you finish your diet, you will gain weight, because your metabolic rate is not as high.

So that brings me to the next point, which is lifestyle.

Lifestyle Changes are needed to lose weight

If you go back to the way you were eating before your diet, your body will return to how it was before. It’s just math – you are eating too much again, or too much junk, and just as your body didn’t like it in the past, it does not like it now.

You will also likely gain an additional amount of body-fat, as your body now with an influx of calories is thinking let’s store more body-fat this time, incase she is short on food again.

So in order to maintain your weight loss, you need to maintain the lifestyle choices that supported the weight loss in the first place.

Lastly, we want to look at your attitude;

Attitude matters if you want to lose weight for good

If you’re thinking to live in whatever way you want when it comes to food and drink, your body will do whatever it wants in order to mange that. If you chronically over-eat, you will chronically store extra body-fat.

Likewise if you’re really stressed – you don’t even need to eat an excessive amount of food in order to gain weight or have trouble losing it – if your body is in survival node, fat-loss can be difficult, and weight gain is actually a little easier.

If you’re looking to combat stress in order to succeed in lifestyle goals, check out my powerful Nervous System Reset program and support fat loss by lowering stress first.

So that’s the crux of it – if you’re stuck on a weight loss/regain hamster wheel, make sure you’re interested in long term lifestyle change, that you’re willing to eat better and take care of yourself, that you’re investing in lowering stress, and remember it’s not a simple process.

Dieting on your own often causes more problems than it does solutions, because it’s complex and you want to ensure you achieve fat loss without adding more stress to your body and without causing more issues with your metabolism in the future.

A healthy metabolism ensures a healthy body composition, and losing weight is about caring for your body’s overall wellbeing in the short and long term!

If you’re interested in losing weight and really struggling with it, check out my services page for support! I’ve helped hundreds of women lose weight in a way that optimising wellbeing and ensures the body-fat stays off for good.

You can also check out my Nutrition program which I created for women like you who want to eat to nourish their bodies, nurture their metabolism and set themselves up for weight loss success in the long term;

If you’re looking for some inspiration, check out my client Teri’s journey which made it into the the Daily Mail and Honey Nine these past few months;

https://honey.nine.com.au/latest/weight-loss-teri-left-with-excess-skin-underwent-surgery-then-breast-cancer/06517af5-8bfe-411d-9c6a-6684b55095dc

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-13884469/90-kilo-weight-loss-coke-addiction-binge-eating.html

Happy reading!!

Jen x