Excerpt from Enlightened Weight Loss
Your body stores fat to use in case of emergencies. It has built-in survival mechanisms to prevent you from losing it for good.
Your body responds to weight loss by slowing down your metabolism and making you feel hungry and lazy, which makes it impossible to keep the weight off.
Studies show that taking periodic breaks from weight loss can prevent those survival mechanisms from kicking in. That way you can lose the weight, without gaining it all back.
You need to take these breaks for every ten pounds you lose.
What I mean by “take a break” is adjust your intake so that you don’t lose weight anymore. That doesn’t mean you should gain weight. It means you should maintain it.
You’ll maintain your weight for one to two weeks and then go back to your weight loss plan until you reach your goal weight.
During your weight loss break, you should weigh yourself every day to make sure you aren’t gaining.
There are a few different ways to maintain your weight:
- If your weight loss plan is based on calories, then follow the weight maintenance calorie target guide below. If you’re following a meal plan, then switch to the plan that‘ll hit your calorie target for weight maintenance.
- If your plan does not involve calorie control, then you can experiment by increasing your intake by a small amount at a time, until you see that your weight is stabilizing.
- If your weight loss plan is based on fasting, you can stop fasting for those two weeks. Or continue to fast, with your calorie target increased for maintenance.
- Instead of eating more, another option is to reduce or stop exercise for those two weeks.
After your maintenance period, return back to your previous weight loss plan.
Repeat weight loss breaks for every ten pounds you lose until you hit your goal weight.
