The Next Step After Reaching Your Goal Weight
Accomplishing such a big goal like achieving your ideal weight, a lot of people find themselves lost when they reach that goal. What’s next? It can be a struggle to not go back to old habits, which can lead to rebound weight gain.
It’s important to reward yourself for coming this far, self empowerment and encouragement is a powerful tool. Maintaining your new weight and lifestyle is crucial for your overall health. Once you’ve reached your goal weight, it’s time to start planning how to keep it that way.
Step 1: Set Yourself up for Success
Speaking with your doctor about what to do next is the best option. A licensed professional can help you adjust to a more relaxed diet instead of trying to do it on your own. There’s security in knowing that you aren’t doing what can be harmful to your body and weight management.
You will also want to do research on easy ways to maintain your new lifestyle. Special occasions like birthdays and holidays can throw you off track in a moment’s notice. By doing research on ways to still celebrate while still maintaining your diet can help you prepare for the future.
Informing family and friends of this new lifestyle change can help you stay accountable, especially if you’re living with them. Creating a support system gives you stability and can even encourage them to join you in a healthier way of living.
Step 2: Prepare Yourself
Fill your pantry with plenty of options for healthy meals and snacks. Giving yourself a variety of proteins, vegetables, and fruits ensures you won’t grab unnecessary and unhealthy snacks that can create a setback. Your body has already adjusted to the new and healthier lifestyle, which means slipping into old habits will lower the metabolism and contribute to sluggishness.
You’ll want to find an activity you enjoy that gets the blood pumping. Walking, biking, yoga, and more can help you keep the weight off without doing the same boring workouts.
Step 3: Create More Goals for Yourself
Setting new goals can help you stay focused. Without a clear purpose for you to keep moving, it can be easy to just let go of the new lifestyle all together. Goal-setting is good for the mind and heart, it keeps us focused on something in order to keep moving forward. Finding new ways to keep physical activity while instilling joy can help you tremendously.
For some ideas of goals you can set, check out this list of activities Options Medical Weight Loss patients were able to accomplish following their weight loss journey:
- Run a 5K
- Master 5 yoga poses
- Climb a mountain
- Reach the top of a rock wall
- Complete a triathlon
- Hold a 60-second plank
- Touch your toes
- Do 25 push-ups
These are all achievable goals that you can pursue that will help you keep the weight off while exercising your mind. Weight loss isn’t the end of your journey, it’s just the beginning.