©2024 Raimondi Strength and Conditioning · All Rights Reserved.

Is it sustainable?

Is it sustainable?
August 8, 2018 Dan Raimondi

Losing weight is hard. What’s even harder is keeping those pounds off. As research has shown, people who try and lose weight rapidly through a combination of excessive calorie restriction and very high amounts of exercise don’t sustain the weight loss in the long run. Why? Well, for starters, they didn’t adopt a strategy they could sustain when they weren’t in that environment. This is one of the most important questions to ask yourself: is this new diet sustainable? If you try something that you can’t keep up for more than a few weeks, it’s probably not a good strategy.

What’s a more sensible approach to losing weight?

  1. Buy a scale
  2. Create a small caloric deficit, something like 200-500 calories fewer than your current level. This could be replacing soda with diet soda or reducing your portion sizes.
  3. Weigh yourself 2-3 times per week and keep track. Daily fluctuations aren’t as important as weekly trends. After 2 weeks, check to see if your bodyweight is trending downward. If it is, keep going. If it isn’t, cut 100-200 more calories out and keep going.*
  4. Continue strength training. This will help retain muscle as you’re losing body fat. Keeping your protein intake high (in general, 1 gram per pound of bodyweight) will also help keep your hard earned muscle.
  5. When your weight loss slows, consider a diet break. Give yourself a few weeks to maintain that new weight and allow your body to catch up. Don’t diet forever. Give it 8-10 weeks and then try and maintain that new weight. We’re in this for the long run, so learning to maintain a given weight is important.
  6. Find a diet that fits your lifestyle. If you like your cereal don’t go low carb.

*If you’ve cut calories but still don’t seem to be losing weight, be more diligent with how you’re counting. It’s very easy to underestimate how much you’re actually eating. Remember, even small little bites of candy here and there add up.