Hello fitness friends. I have not forgotten about you! Tonight I wanted to write about maintaining.

We’ve talked in the past about how people push-even to unhealthy means to reach a goal only to gain the weight back. If they lost muscle in the process, they normally gain back more than they lost.

How do you maintain?

1. Use healthy means to get the weight off! Starvation diets, crash diets, over exercising, etc…are all sure fire ways to sabotage your metabolism. Once you increase calories or cease the workouts, weight gain commences.

So use healthy means to get it off! What can you maintain. If you’re eating bird food and burning a 1,000 calories a day-it’s not only unhealthy…it’s not something you can maintain for life. If your doctor approves of a special strict diet, that’s different.

2. Slowly increase calories. Don’t go from 1500 a day to 3000 a day. Try 1500, 1600, 1700, to 1800. Build while continuing to exercise until you get to the calories needed to maintain.

See calorie calculator link below:

http://calorieneedscalculator.com/mobile/calclb.php

3. Don’t ditch resistance training if your doctor approves. Muscle burns more calories than fat. If you lose muscle, you slow your metabolism.

4. Portion control. You can have some of your favorite foods in moderation. Binge eating is not your friend. Opt for smaller portions. The French eat calorie rich food, yet they are leaner than Americans. Portion size matters.

You can opt for 1 cheat meal a week if you must.

5. Understand if you consume more than you burn, you will gain weight. Especially if you’re sedentary.

6. Find an activity you love and do that! I love dancing. It doesn’t seem like exercise, yet it is. You may like tennis, volleyball, basketball, running, boxing, gardening,…whatever you love to do, get moving!

7. Recall how hard it is to get the weight off! One thing I did with the fitness challenge was taken before pictures. Looking at them is motivation not to go backwards.

Lastly I say that having a goal that grows is key. I finished phase I. I set a new goal for the next 4 weeks. The goal is to keep going! I hope you keep going.

Erin