Weight Loss & Diet Plans

4 Keys to Weight Loss Success

Keep Track of Your Weight and Eating

This is a behavior shared by weight maintainers that runs against common wisdom. Many people have argued that weighing yourself regularly can put too much emphasis on weight rather than fitness.

We don't know exactly why regular weighing is a common characteristic of people who've been successful at maintaining their weight, but we speculate that people use their scales as an early warning system. People who weigh themselves regularly will notice quickly if they have gained a few pounds and can then implement some strategies to prevent gaining more.

Checking your weight less often can mean that you might wake up one morning and discover that you gained 10 pounds. That can be pretty discouraging, and it might cause you to just give up.

The Myth of Painless Weight Loss

One thing that people in the Registry tell us again and again is that weight loss and weight maintenance is not easy: it's hard work. Diet programs that advertise easy or painless weight loss and weight maintenance tend to fail in the long run. A lot of the people in the Registry tell us that they only lost their weight after they gave up on the "painless" methods.

The problem for many people is that they work hard at losing weight but then don't have the skills to maintain that weight loss. We've found that the best way to do that is to exercise and eat carefully for the rest of your life.

That may sound tough, and it is. But when we ask people on the Registry, they say losing the weight was worth it, and that it actually got easier over time. Getting to a lower weight has made their lives better, and it can make yours better, too.