Losing weight can seem challenging, but managing weight loss is no easy task either, as it takes unwavering dedication and steadfast diligence to make sure you keep those excess pounds off. To keep your hard-earned progress, INSIDER spoke to expert nutritionists, trainers, and fitness experts about weight management tips to keep in mind if you’re losing the battle with unwanted weight gain. Here are some things they recommend keeping in mind.
1. Ditch the diet mindset.
“Health doesn't come boxed in a package or in a 30-day plan,” Jenni Bourque and Mirna Sharafeddine, registered dietitians behind The Naughty Nutritionists, told INSIDER. The diet mindset can really hold you back, as restrictive fad diets come with the obsession of the scale, the counting of calories or points, and often the result, is a yo-yo back and forth between diets, they said.
Sustainable weight loss comes from a place of understanding that healthy eating is lifelong, they explained, and you have to learn that you can’t always restrict your food forever.
2. Make food your best friend.
“A lot of women who want to lose weight either have a fear of food, or an addiction to food, and neither one of those things creates a healthy relationship with food,” said Bourque and Sharafeddine. Having a healthy relationship with food is key, they said, as you’ll want to take the simplicity of whole food ingredients and look at them as nourishment.
This makes it easier to create a plan that encourages healthy whole foods, with some "cheat meals" every now and then.
3. Learn to read labels and remove highly-processed food.
“One of the most important things you can do when making food choices is knowing exactly what you're putting into your body,” explained Bourque and Sharafeddine.
Many highly-processed foods are filled with artificial ingredients, hidden sugars, trans fats, or allergens (wheat, corn, soy), they said. To avoid selecting processed food items, they recommended diligently reading the ingredient list to avoid any tricky label claims.
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