How to Avoid Piling on the Pounds After Weight Loss Success

Pick a diet you can stick with. If you try to lose all of your weight fast with a diet that severely restricts the food you can eat, you'll see the diet as a temporary fix rather than a lifestyle change. Once you reach your weight-loss goals, you won't need to stay on the strict diet anymore, but you also won't have a healthier eating plan to fall back on. Without a moderate diet that you'll want to keep up with even after you've lost the weight, you'll likely go back to old eating habits.

Learn how to avoid emotional eating. This one can be a huge downfall for people who want to keep off weight they lost. When you're feeling sad or depressed, your body craves sugar, fat and carbohydrates to increase chemicals in your brain, like dopamine, that make you feel happier. Learn to associate other activities with happy feelings instead of eating, and find new things you can turn to. For example, try exercise or hanging out with friends instead of eating when you're feeling down.

Make new goals to keep yourself fit and active. Weight loss is a huge goal that can motivate you to stay healthy. But once you've reached that goal, you need new goals to replace it. The goals can be as simple as increasing the number of crunches you do each week. If you need a more long-term goal, consider something like training for a marathon.

Look for friends with similar goals for help. Sometimes people keep accountability partners while dieting, but give that up after they've achieved their weight loss. Find friends who will be exercise partners and will motivate you to stay in shape. Look for people who also want to eat healthier, so you won't be tempted to order a high-calorie meal just because you can convince yourself that you earned it.