Trouble Losing? Try This Crazy Strategy

Dropping those unwanted pounds can be a frustrating when you’re not seeing any progress.

When you don’t see a change when you step on the scale or a change in body fat percentage, or even a change in how your clothes fit, it’s enough to make you want to give up completely.

You feel discouraged. You’re no longer motivated and start thinking, “Why bother?” Then you go back to the old habits that caused the weight gain in the first place, feeling like an utter failure.

If this is how you’re feeling, there’s a crazy, counter-intuitive strategy I want you to consider trying: can you at least maintain your current weight?

If you’ve been trying to lose weight ‘forever’ and yet can’t really see any progress, you’re probably putting a lot pressure on yourself to ‘lose it‘, right?

Along with that pressure comes stress, doubt and self-recrimination — “Can’t you do anything right?“, your inner critic yells at you.

That doesn’t sound like a lot of fun, does it?

Hit the Reset Button and Get Back to Basics

If this sounds like you, take a deep breath and step back. Ease up on the pressure to lose, lose, lose and instead focus on getting a handle on maintaining your current weight and stopping weight gain.

Focus on getting a handle on your current eating and exercise habits.

Forget all the diets you’ve tried that didn’t work. Forget all the studies that contradict themselves about what you should eat and what you shouldn’t eat. Forget all those little tricks that supposedly help you lose weight.

Think of it as a reset button.

See: Calories In vs. Calories Out – The Basic Formula Explained

What You’ll Gain When You Work to Maintain

Still not convinced? Here are some benefits to taking the pressure off yourself by focusing on maintaining your weight.

• Focusing on maintaining weight instead of losing weight creates some breathing room and eases the ‘must lose weight now’ pressure. We all know stress isn’t good for weight loss, right?
• You’ll gain confidence in your abilities when you see that you can stop the weight gain and maintain your current weight.
• It will give you a chance to see what’s working for you and what isn’t.
• You’ll also start to see where you can make improvements and where you need help dealing with obstacles and challenges, like eating out a restaurant or special family events that involve food. (Don’t all family events involve food?)

When You Lean How to Maintain You Can Learn To Lose

Track your calories for a month with a focus on maintaining your weight. You can create a free FitWatch Calorie Tracker account here: FitWatch Calorie Tracker

Become aware of the calories you’re eating, the exercise that you’re doing (or not doing) and how that balances out to maintain your weight. What you’re looking to do is balance your calories in and your calories out.

Once you see that you can maintain and control your weight, you can dig into the data and see where you can make small improvements in order to create a calorie deficit. A calorie deficit means that you’re burning more calories than you eat. And that? That puts you on the straight path to losing weight.

Lose Weight Under Your Rules

Losing weight and getting fit is all about making changes you can live with for the rest of your life. Make sure the small improvements you make are changes that make losing weight fun and stress-free.

Losing weight shouldn’t be unpleasant.

Losing weight shouldn’t mean giving up eating the foods you love.

It should be about taking back control of your habits in order to create a healthy and fit body.

Keep in mind, too, that you’re more than a number on a scale.

If you’ve been on that never-ending merry-go-round of weight loss, constantly dieting but never seeing any real progress, hit that reset button to get back on track.

Understand what your body needs to maintain your current weight. Once you have that under control, you can focus on losing weight in a way that makes sense to you.

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