It’s hard enough to lose weight, but nearly impossible to prevent pounds from returning. Keeping pounds off is especially difficult if you dieted. Dieting doesn’t work because it always ends. At that point people go back to the eating habits that put on the weight in the first place. Rather than dieting to lose weight, people need to make lifestyle changes to not only take off pounds but keep them off permanently.

What are the lifestyle changes you need to make?

Healthy eating and regular exercise are two of the changes, but they are the two with the top priority for weight loss and weight loss maintenance. Eating healthy doesn’t mean you can never indulge in a gooey, sugary dessert. It means you can do it occasionally, but also using portion control. Eating healthy means eating more whole foods and fewer processed foods. Once you start, you’ll find that after a while, those gooey desserts don’t taste nearly as good as they once did.

A healthy lifestyle includes a program of regular exercise.

It doesn’t have to be a formal program. It can mean going to the gym or just walking more and becoming more active. It means taking a break from sitting every fifty minutes and spending five minutes moving around by walking or even doing a few jumping jacks. Even though it doesn’t mean you have to have a formal program, it must become part of your life. That means it must become a habit. Exercise helps boost the immune system and keeps you younger at a cellular level.

Eating the right foods not only tastes good and keeps weight off, it boosts your energy.

When you have the right types of food filled with nutrients, it keeps your blood sugar level. That means you’ll be less likely to snack. Cutting out sugar is a huge boost to maintaining level blood sugar and overall good health. Cutting out processed foods helps prevent additives like high fructose corn syrup—HFCS. Studies show that HFCS not only affects your blood sugar levels, it messes with your satiety and hunger hormones, reducing those that make you feel full and boosting the hunger hormones. Make it a habit to read labels and avoid foods containing it.

• Drink more water. Even though diet and exercise are habits that help you both lose and maintain weight, so does increasing your water intake. Often people eat, when they’re actually hungry, plus when taken with a meal makes you feel full sooner.
• Watching what you eat helps you lose and maintain weight loss. There are calories in those soft drinks and even diet drinks take their toll on your body by increasing visceral fat—belly fat.
• Exercise helps you build muscles and muscle tissue burns more calories than fat tissue does. The more you have, the higher your metabolism will be to help you keep weight off permanently.
• Your exercise program should be well balanced with exercises to boost endurance, balance, strength and flexibility. You need fitness in all these areas. Strength building will also help you lose weight faster.