Reached your goal than what?

Please take some time to learn about the characteristics of those who have maintained a significant weight loss over time. Strive to learn from and hopefully model what these weight loss superstars have done so that you may one day join the ranks of those who have mastered weight loss maintenance.
Here are a few of my tips:

1. Keep monitoring your intake and output. You must continue to monitor your intake in some form (journal, portion control, etc.) and you must continue to exercise (likely more than you did when you first started).
   
2. Keep your home and environment trigger free. Triggers erode willpower.
   
3. Stay accountable to others. This can be accomplished by sharing your journey with your friends, colleagues, and the SparkPeople community. Don’t be shy! Get all of the support that you can get!
   
4. Resolve conflict.
   
5. Recommit to your goals each and every day. I log into SparkPeople as my recommitment home base.
   
6. Stay motivated with success stories. I read all the success stories that I come across in order to inspire me to maintain my changes.
   
7. Never give up. When I struggle, I remind myself that giving up is not an option and is non-negotiable. If I feel like giving up it doesn’t mean that I am looking to quit-- it means that something is not working and that I need to tweak my plan. There’s no way that I would ever want to go back to where I started.
   
8. Remember that going back to your old habits means regaining the lost weight. I accept that I cannot return to nightly candy binges and that my lifestyle change must be permanent.

What is the bottom line? To maintain your weight, you must accept that you will need to change your lifestyle forever and that you cannot return to your old habits. You need to find a plan that you can live with and that you can see yourself following for many years to come. Finally, you need to stay motivated and sustain your willpower. All of these things require continuous effort and cannot be maintained without keeping your goals front and center.

I’m going to be hanging around SparkPeople for a long time because I’m in it for life! How about you?

Keep sparking, everyone! Never give up!


http://www.dailyspark.com/blog.asp?post=so_youve_reached_maintenance_now_what