One of the biggest problems many diet plans and diet books have is that it doesn’t teach you what to do once you’re done. It doesn’t give you the tools and skills on how to transition back to “normal” eating and to maintain the results that you’ve achieved.
A lot of people don’t know how to keep the habits they’ve developed and ended up struggling to maintain what they worked hard for.
As a result, their weight rebounds, the fat comes back on, and the never-ending diet continues.
If this is you, here’s what you can do to transition out of your diet and back into a healthy maintenance mode:
1. Slowly add back calories
If you’ve been in a calorie deficit for a while, what you want to do is slowly add back calories until you’re back in your maintenance range. A good way to do it is to shoot for 150-200 cal increments per week. If your deficit is 1200 and maintenance for you is 1600, give yourself 2-3 weeks of small increases to get back to normal.
2. Continue the habits you can stick with
During the course of your diet, you’ve picked up some healthy habits.
Keep the ones that are easy for you to continue doing while slowly piecing other ones together. If you’ve been nailing your protein intake and sleep, awesome, keep at it.
In the meantime, you can work on other habits. It could be managing stress eating, getting enough vegetables, and lowering the amount of booze you’re drinking.
3. Take the pressure off of yourself
This is a mental shift you’ll have to make. It’s easy to put pressure on yourself and not wanting to screw up your results which you worked hard for. But that places unnecessary stress and isn’t healthy in the long run.
Instead, change your mindset and know that you’re playing the long game. Fitness is meant to enhance and improve your life, not something to obsess over, unless you compete for a living.
Enjoy some of your favorite foods and drinks within reason and continue your training and habits. You worked for your results, so now you can ease off the gas pedal just a bit and maintain what you have.
And that is how you keep your results after your diet is over with.
