6 Proven Ways to Maintain a Healthy Weight

Maintaining a healthy weight has been one of the most searched health topics on the internet. Therefore, today we discuss six proven ways to maintain a healthy weight. Especially, here we have focused on easy activities that everybody can and must do.

Several uncontrollable factors like age, gender, and genetics have control over the body weight of people. But you have control over what you eat and drink, how you exercise, and how happy you are in your life. So, these would make you fat-free and lead you to a healthy weight and a happy life.

When you are obese, you might feel losing weight and maintaining a healthy weight are the hardest things in the world. But maintaining the weight after losing it is even harder.

Around 85% – 90% of the people who lose weight with all the difficulties regain weight in no time. You have to have the same willpower to maintain the weight you achieve by going through a tough time.

1. Regular exercise

Exercise is crucial in maintaining a healthy weight regime as it positively affects both physical and mental health. Exercise helps to increase metabolism and help to burn calories.

According to the Mayo Clinic, a person needs at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise per week to maintain weight.

This needs to be consistent throughout the week to gain better effects. As a matter of fact, you need to focus on exercising for 30 minutes every day.

Active walking (at least 2.5 miles per hour), dancing (ballroom or social), biking (slower than 10 miles per hour), and gardening are some moderate aerobic activities you can involve in your day-to-day life.

Vigorous aerobic activities like hiking uphill, running, fast cycling, and swimming have proven effects on maintaining a healthy weight.

Combining these moderate and vigorous aerobic activities with strengthening and stretching exercises can maximize the benefits you achieve for maintaining your body weight.

Recommended 30-minute walk every day is too much for you, try to walk at least a few minutes. Having some kind of regular physical activity is better than no activity at all.

In the meantime, you must also focus on reducing your daily sitting time. Higher sitting hours make a higher risk of having metabolic problems. This could negatively affect maintaining body weight though you have regular exercises.

2. Meal plan

When dealing with maintaining a healthy weight, thorough attention should be paid to the meal plan. The focus should be on what you eat, how much you eat, and when you eat.

Studies have shown that consuming lower-calorie-dense foods is more effective than trying to resist large portions of high-calorie-dense foods.

You have to select the foods rich in nutrients, not the foods rich in calories.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), a healthy diet should comprise staples like cereals (wheat, barley, rye, maize, or rice) or starchy tubers or roots (potato, yam, taro, or cassava), legumes (lentils and beans), fruits and vegetables, foods from animal sources (meat, fish, eggs, and milk).

Eating plenty of vegetables and fruits, essential sources of vitamins, minerals, plant protein, dietary fiber, and antioxidants, will help maintain your weight.

According to the WHO guidelines, a person’s total fat consumption should not exceed 30% of the total energy intake.

So, you have to choose healthier unsaturated fats in vegetable oils like sunflower, corn, soy, or olive rather than consuming animal fats or oils like coconut and palm oil, lard, butter, or ghee, which are high in unhealthy saturated fats.

Research has been done on the relationship between weight loss after obesity and hunger. It showed that the people who lose weight after being obese, with the help of lifestyle interventions combining exercise and diet, have to deal with increased hunger in the long term.

Hence, to deal with this hunger, you have to consume a lot of proteins because proteins can reduce the level of hormones causing hunger and increase the hormones that induce fullness.

So, it will soothe your hunger and will provide satiety. In addition to that, a lot of calories have to be spent on the metabolism of proteins in the body. Thus, it can even burn some extra calories.

Studies have shown a diet plan of three meals a day consisting of a large breakfast, moderate lunch, and small dinner has positive effects on maintaining weight rather than six or more small meals daily.

Consequently, aforesaid all included meal plans eventually lead you to better maintenance of a healthy weight.

3. Mindful eating

While eating, you have to pay full attention to the eating process and understand the body’s inner desire for the food.

Mindful eating involves slow eating and chewing the food thoroughly, which helps easy digestion in a calm environment with fewer distractions.

So, you can enjoy the natural taste of the meal and stop eating when you are full. 

If you are distracted by television while eating, you will gulp large portions of the food without chewing. This will lead to digestion problems and eating a large amount of food without recognizing the point of fullness.

That can destroy all the measures taken to maintain a healthy weight.

Some people may have emotional eating behaviors. So, you should practice mindful eating to minimize those behaviors. 

4. Drink water

Water plays a critical role in all the functions of the human body.

Researchers are still trying to determine the benefits of drinking water in weight maintenance. However they have found a positive correlation between increased water consumption and weight maintenance. 

Think about the daily struggle you are dealing with, “craving for the food.” The amount of food you need to feel full can be reduced with water intake. Water provides fullness. It works as a natural appetizer suppressant.

So, you can satisfy your stomach with a lesser amount of food if you drink a glass or two before a meal which helps to lower your calorie intake. In addition to that, drinking cold water helps to increase the calorie-burning of the body.

Water helps to remove the waste that builds up inside the body. When you drink sufficient water, your kidneys quickly filter the toxins and remove them through urine.

Undigested food products and other solid waste will be removed as stools from your body. If you are dehydrated, this stool becomes hardened, and you may suffer constipation. Drinking enough water softens the stool and removes waste easily.

When waste is retained inside the body, you feel tired, bloated, and swollen, adding some weight to your body.

So, drinking water reduces some extra kilos from your body.

If you are focusing on healthy weight maintenance, the key is exercise. The effects of exercise can be enhanced by drinking water. Because when you drink water, it helps your muscles, joints, and tissues to work properly.

The vital organs like the lungs, heart, brain, and kidney will work actively, helping you to remain in the exercise sessions for an extended period and help to burn calories.

According to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) recommendation in the United States, an adult woman should consume 2,700 mL of water per day, and an adult man should consume 3,700 mL of water per day.

5. Control stress level

Stress has significant effects on the hormonal balance in your body. Hormones like cortisol increase with higher stress levels, positively impacting appetite, food intake, and belly fat.

Sometimes people try to eat when they feel highly stressed. Some are looking for sweet foods like ice cream and chocolate to release their stress conditions, which eventually leads to regaining weight.

So, to control the stress conditions, you better use meditation or yoga. They help to ease your mind and release the stress you are dealing with.

Stress can build up due to your workplace problems, family problems, or maybe your personal problems.

So always avoid them, and keep your mind busy with things you are interested in, such as watching a film, going out for vacation, meeting your good old friends, and allocating time for your hobbies. 

In the event of controlling stress levels, sleep plays a significant role. Your body requires time to recover from the stress conditions. That time can be provided only through good tight sleep.

Less sleep increases the ghrelin hormone level, known as the hunger hormone. They raise your appetite, failing you in healthy weight maintenance.

So, you have to fight against the stress that develops inside you if you really want to maintain your weight.

6. Regular weighing

Regular weighing shows you the progress you are achieving and thus encourages you to stick to the routine you are working on for weight maintenance. 

You will feel tired and fed up by exercising every day and sticking to a meal plan if you don’t know the results of it. Knowing the weight you lose or gain encourages you to exercise more.

That will stick you to the new healthy lifestyle you adopt, holding you from going back to the bad old habits or your on-and-off dieting patterns.

So, you will be able to maintain your weight easily.

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What should you do to maintain a healthy weight?

So, you can maintain the healthy weight you achieved by spending so much time and effort with these simple changes in your life. You should not only rely on the control of your food intake. Exercise, water, mental health, and sleep significantly affect body weight. 

Simply, you must focus on a new lifestyle to maintain your weight and be happy.