10 Practical Ways to Maintain Your Healthy Weight

No mega restrictions, off limit foods or hours spent exercising here!

These tips are the real life, “I’m really busy,” answers to help you maintain or get started on your weight loss success.

Here are 10 practical ways to maintain your healthy weight: 

1. Enlist a support network – You don’t have to do it alone.  Whether you need to talk to someone for their opinion or advice, you need someone to vent to so that you don’t use the ice cream instead, or you just need someone to celebrate your accomplishments with, your success needs support.  Develop a support network of people who you love and trust and who feel the same way about you and would be there for you and cheer you on.  Then, don’t forget to call on them when you need them!
2. Listen to your body – It’s when you start restricting foods, having food rules and depriving yourself of foods that you will run into trouble.  Instead of falling victim to this cycle, listen to what your body needs and wants.  Are you thirsty? Hungry or just stressed?  Full or you do need to have a little more dinner? Whatever the case, your body will tell you and you just have to do what it says!
3. Get moving – While structured exercise is important, some days, when you’re short on time, simply getting up and walking around the office or walking up a few extra flights of stairs is better than nothing.  Not only does it get you moving physically, but it is good for boosting your mental health as well.
4. Get some sleep – Don’t neglect the importance of sleep.  This is when our body does the most work in terms of repairing damage, rebuilding muscle, combating stress and simply giving an overall reset from the day.  Aim for quantity and quality sleep every night.
5. Don’t stress – Easier said than done of course, but stress will wreck havoc on your current weight loss success, future goals and your overall health and wellbeing.  Furthermore, the release of the stress hormone disrupts digestion, depletes immunity and can cause your body to store fat.   
6. Ditch the scale – Rely on how you feel, how your clothes fit and how confident you feel in your own skin to dictate what the scale can only show as an arbitrary number.
7. Focus on Filling up – Choose fiber, protein and nutrient dense foods that fill you up. This makes you less likely to reach for food again just an hour or so after eating, and it also leaves you feeling more satisfied with your food and meals. 
8. Drink more water – You’ve heard it so often, but it is so true!  At the very least, water acts to fill you up, curbing your feelings of hunger and needing to eat.  More importantly though, water helps with detoxification of your body, improves digestion and elimination, helps produce healthy, radiating skin and boosts your energy and brain function.
9. Eat more plants – Aim to have at least one meatless meal every week.  Not only will you get a nutrient boost, but you will also be able to explore a new category of food you may be unfamiliar with, as well as reduce the load on your digestive system.  Not to mention, plants are typically more fibrous and less calorie dense than meat, meaning you will be fuller for far fewer calories!
10. Don’t be weight resistant – In the gym that is!  Muscle burns more calories at rest, meaning, build more muscle and you will lean out more, even when you aren’t exercising at the time.

By: Laura Peill –  Viand Nutrition