The fundamentals of successful longterm weightloss for everyone.

I have road tested these fundamentals myself. Currently been in maintenance 10 months. applied them for a further 10 months though necessarily all of them from the beginning because some I learnt along the way. Those i started off with, i had learnt from previous experience of failure. This is what's called learning from your mistakes. If you don't learn from your mistakes, you will fail but i understand that it is not so easy to understand what the mistake you made actually was , hence I am giving you a helping hand.

1. Calories in, Calories out is true but there is more to long term successful weightloss than this. If you run your diet as though it were as simple as CICO you will , then you will be back at square one sooner or later. The remaining fundamentals are hints as to why that happens so please work on incorporating these other fundamentals into your personal approach as soon as you.

2. Exercise is not the answer to successful long term weight. You do not need to exercise to lose weight and relying on it can be the reason why you fail. Exercise for health and fitness, not for weightloss. The studies generally show that people tend to replace all the calories burnt through exercise. To out-exercise your consumption you have to do a lot (more than an hour a day most days of the week) and that's not sustainable for the vast majority even in the short term let alone the long-term. This one I have fallen victim to more times than i can count. Exercise moderately for your health and do it when you feel like it. And if you have a great deal to lose, you are better off focusing almost all your effort on diet until you are inside your healthy weight range. Maybe I should write a blog on this because there are a lot of angles to cover.

If you choose to start off with exercise from the outset, when you stop you may find it takes a few weeks for your appetite to settle down but you should not be alarmed at a temporary rise in the scales. This is pretty normal. Do not panic. And do not give up your diet when you stop exercise. Everything is going to be fine so long as you continue to hold the line on your diet.

4. Do not severely cut your calories for too long. The general concensus seems to be a maximum of three months. Personally i think you are much better off not severely cutting calories at all. It will increase your chances of long term success if you don't cut your calories severely. Besides rapid weightloss has health consequences that may not be obvious for many years eg gallstones. For those moderately overweight, a loss of about one pound or less per week is ideal but if you are very overweight, aiming for a loss of two pounds seems to be the ideal. The thing is if you are hungry, your calorie deficit may be too severe. Significant cuts in your calories results in slowing metabolism over about three months. Most people don't seem to know this. When you find you metabolism has slowed (when you start to find weight loss going really slowly despite still eating at a moderate deficit, then you should reboot your metabolism by increasing your calories for a little while. YOu will not put on a much weight but it will have a great postive effect on your future ability to lose weight. You should not start eating all the crap that you have been training yourself to eat less of.

4. Fruit and vegetables! Especially vegetables! Become a fan. Fruit and veg are low calorie, they fill you up and release their energy slowly and give you the nutrition you need to make long term weight loss easier. Along with protein, these are the foods that help you avoid hunger the best. Develop your skills in the kitchen with these foods so that you can stop hating them. Actually an extension of this fundamental is to eat a wide variety of food all the time. I read about a study where it was determined that one should be trying to eat about 30 different foods each week in order to reach optimum nutrition. If you refuse to become a vegetable lover, I cannot see how it is at all possible for you to lose weight and maintain it for the long term.

5. Eat the right amount of protein for your weight. (google it) Its not just about satiety. It's fundamentally about reducing loss of muscle mass. Muscle is protein and you need to eat protein and move to maintain muscle mass. You don't need to exericse hugely but you do need to use your muscles. Apparently large people do hide a quite a bit of muscle underneath it all. This is because it's needed to carry the weight. As you lose weight, your body naturally adjusts it's muscle mass to your new weight. This is not a bad thing but if you are eating a low calorie diet, you will lose more than should which leads to that gaunt look when people get down to the bottom end of their healthy weight range.

6. Do include fat in your diet. You can lose weight fairly easily and still eat up to 40% calories from fat. Restricting fat severely makes losing weight less enjoyable because much food tastes cardboardy without it and it can have health consequences. So choose mostly healthy fats such as cold pressed virgin oils, nuts, seeds, avocados, and oily fish but avoid low fat dieting.

7. A happy mood is vital for easy weightloss and successful longterm maintenance so failing to pay attention to your mental wellbeing and not working on improving your self-messaging will undermine your best efforts and intentions at any moment. This is partly because your mood is not just psychological. It is also biological. External events can lead to hormonal changes and you want to have your hormonse well balanced for successful weightloss. It's worth learning about the role of hormones for weightloss. Its fascinating and are significantly ignored area. Of course we can't always be happy all the time. But if you are prone to stress, or depression you must learn to fend these off before they can take root. This is why councilling and personal growth is vital when you have issues. There are some very good books around - seek them out and don't stop reading and learning until you feel you are in charge of your mental wellbeing and not subject to every passing stiff breeze. Prioritise your mental wellbeing. If your lifestyle is stressful (work, kids, difficult husband/family), develop your ability to resist feeling the stress. Some people are naturally really good at handling stress. And others (myself included ) are very bad at it. If you lack the skills, get professional help and train yourself. Develop your self-awareness. It's a slow process but its so worth it. One way to speed things is up is by spending some learning Mindfulness meditation and especially through a buddhist channel if you can. One reason why the buddhist approach to it is better than pure secular approach is because the buddhist approach includes ethical principles and practices and the secular approach doesn't.

8. Get organised in the kitchen. Become a functional cook so you can enjoy your healthy food. To be successful long term, you will most likely need to cook for yourself most of the time. I wouldn't say meal plans are essential though you might find them useful. Learn to cook, keep your fridge well stocked, shop for fruit and veg in season to keep costs down. Vary your diet. Get some recipe books. Cultivate your knowledge of flavours and simply traditional cooking techniques. Find a way to make it an enjoyable part of your life. If you are very busy, work out ways to be more efficient in the kitchen. My latest idea is to soak and cook my legumes and store them in the freezer in suitable portion sizes so that its quick to make a new dish when i need to. If you've got a family, the kids need to be eating healthy too so get the whole family going along with you. Could your best efforst really be sustainable the hubby and kids are eating junk food all the time while you eat so well.

9. Everybody has an ultimately ideal healthy weight which may hover around a few pounds either way. It may not be the one you decide on yourself at the outset. But this is the goal weight you want to find in the long run. Also with age it will change a little, mostly upwards. And for sure, i'm convinced that if you are doing all the right things (as eludicated above), that number lies somewhere within your healthy weight range though for people who have been very overweight all their lives, it may take some time to get to this point. This particular theory (set point theory) is actually still somewehat contentious I understand but my readings about it and experience with trying to achieve it, convince me it's true. The person i've read who describes it best is Dr Amanda Sainsbury-Salis in her book The Don't Go Hungry Diet so if you want to understand this concept, then i'd get her book but you don't need to. The main take home point, i would try to show is that if you aim too low you will struggle to maintain if you aim too high you are short changing yourself. Maintenance should be fairly easy after a while of getting used to it. The longer you do it and the more you resolve your lifestyle issues the easier maintenance is. But it can take some time so you can't just stop doing everything when you reach goal.

These are the fundamentals that affect EVERYONE's ability to succeed in the long term with weightloss. You can't expect to get your own personal recipe right from your first attempt but if you understand the fundamentals, and try to work them into your personal approach, you will find it easier and you will be more successful. I guarantee it. That said, there will be people here who are suited to doing a lot of exercise for the long term. But this is not most people. Look at athletes. Many get fat when they stop competing. My sister is one person I know who seems suited to lots of exercise but she has never been overweight a day in her life. The people who seem most suited to lots of exercise in the long-term are people like my sister who've never been overweight.

Feel free to debate any of these ideas with me or ask questions.

I'm not sure this is a complete list but it does take care of the main things we all can benefit from understanding.