How To Avoid Weight Regain After Dieting? These 4 Things Will Help You
Depending on the source, within one year of weight loss, 50–70% of people will have regained all the weight. This makes sense considering how most people try losing weight — juice cleanses, keto, detoxes, fasting for 5 years straight because someone said something about autophagy or some such crap.
Let’s assume that you lose weight in a sustainable way — a small to moderate calorie deficit, higher protein intake, more fruits and veggies, weight lifting, and yadda yadda yadda. How do you then transition to weight maintenance?
Here are four pieces of advice that will help you avoid weight regain after dieting:
1. Be okay with being a little hungry
Leptin is one of the most important hormones when it comes to weight regulation because it decreases the urge to eat. And for reasons I can’t be bothered to explain, as you get into a calorie deficit and lose weight, leptin levels drop. This increases hunger.
Conversely, as you increase your calorie intake, leptin levels increase. This means less hunger. Let’s not alert the media about that just yet because there is a problem: After an extended period of dieting, it takes at least 1–2 weeks of eating at maintenance to increase leptin levels (to some degree).