Long Term Weight Loss: How to Lose The Weight And Keep it Off

Weight loss is one of the biggest topics in health and fitness, largely thanks to rising levels of obesity and associated illnesses like diabetes, cardiovascular disease and even mental illness. Countless companies have made your weight loss their business — literally. They are always coming up with new methods and new ways to market them to you.

Many of these methods include traditional forms of weight loss through simply reducing food intake or increasing light activities like walking or cycling, or simply taking up exercise like resistance training or cardiovascular exercise. Others have involved more intensive methods such as low-carb diets, intermittent fasting, crash dieting or extreme increases in exercise, or any combination of these.

However, when studies look at long-term success, which is generally measured by how much weight loss was maintained over a period of around one to five years, the results are not encouraging.

Weight Loss: Short Term Fix Or Long Term Change?

Studies that look at weight loss over a year showed that only around 20 percent of Americans were able to sustain 10 percent of their weight loss. In a European population, under 30 percent of obese individuals, and under 20 percent of overweight individuals, were able to sustain a 10 percent weight loss for over a year.

As time went on these percentages fell even further, with only five percent of individuals maintaining a five percent weight loss over three years, and around 18 percent of individuals maintaining a two percent weight loss over four years.

The reason for this mainly seems to stem from a reduced activity level and energy expenditure from individuals once weight is initially lost. This then causes weight loss to stagnate and, in most cases, reverse. In general terms, when people lose weight they also tend to subconsciously move less!

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Before looking at how these figures could be improved, there are a few obvious issues that should be addressed with general weight loss studies.

Examples include neglecting to find out how much weight could be accounted for by muscle or fat, or what a person’s fitness or activity level is, as these have a significant benefit to health regardless of weight. However, for the vast majority of the individuals studied, who were inactive and sedentary, like many adults in the USA and Europe, these factors don’t apply.

So, for most people looking at weight loss for the first time, reviewing how to make the weight loss sustainable and effective in the long term is necessary to ensure its health benefits are permanent and not short-lived.

Long-term Change: Practices to Help Maintain Weight Loss

When looking at the research in long-term weight loss and the trends of those who have successfully maintained weight loss, a number of common habits are linked with a greater chance of long-term weight loss as well as greater initial weight loss levels.

Exercise

A number of studies comparing the use of exercise, diet, or a combination of the two in effective long-term weight loss, and the amount of weight lost, showed that the use of exercise, either with or without a diet improved weight loss maintenance more than diet alone.

When considering the type of exercise done, cardiovascular exercise, particularly long distance steady-state exercise, seems to be the most beneficial for weight loss, due to the high amount of work that can be done and, therefore, calories that can be burned.

Another important note is that resistance training is not as effective as cardiovascular training for weight loss. This is because resistance training helps to build and maintain muscle mass, which adds to strength, physique and health. This is also one of the reasons why aerobic exercise is so effective for weight loss as it will cause a loss in muscle as well as fat. Therefore, this is good reason to make sure that resistance training is included in any weight loss program to ensure that weight loss is primarily due to fat reduction and not a loss in muscle.

Recreational Activity

Whether this is walking or cycling to work, or moving around more at home or at the office, physical activity outside of formal exercise will also need to be increased, particularly after the initial weight is lost, to ensure the loss is maintained over months or years.

This is especially important if a person is undertaking intense exercise, as their is a tendency for people to compensate for the calories burned during exercise by reducing their non-exercise activity level. Increasing physical activity can be done through setting a daily steps goal, traveling to work by foot, or investing in a treadmill desk. Non-exercise activity has proven to be one of the biggest contributors to energy expenditure, so this step may be the most important for long-term weight loss.

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Selecting Dieting Methods

This is a more recent area of interest for scientists looking at long-term weight loss, but there is some emerging data showing that men may benefit from reducing fat in the diet and women may benefit from a reduction in carbohydrates for long-term weight and fat loss.

The consideration of which dieting methods to use also extends to the type of foods used, with calorie-sparse foods like watery fruits and vegetables having a higher effect on reducing hunger than other foods, and diets high in fiber also showing promise in hunger reduction.

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For long-term results, adherence to the diet is a key element, so reducing hunger and maximizing fat loss through selecting which nutrients to reduce is worth careful consideration.

Conclusion

Overall, long-term weight loss can be sustained so long as adherence to a training program and particular diet is maintained. However, special attention should be given to non-exercise activity levels, as this may be the main cause of weight loss beginning to stagnate or reverse over time.

If all three of these areas are monitored and changed as needed it will make for an easier and more effective permanent weight loss campaign that should help sustain the many associated health benefits that weight loss brings.