By I’m glad this has come up because it’s a massive problem for many people. The rebound weight gain after loss is a common occurrence. There are a couple of factors that could cause this, and I will also highlight the one thing that always bites me in the backside!
Three reasons why we rebound after weight loss
- We start to become complacent about our food choices. This is a big one because when we are on a weight-loss roll, we decide it might be ok to have extra calories for breakfast, snacks and the like. Over time, this can amount to extra calories we don’t need that start appearing as body fat. If you can be honest with yourself and catch it early, you won’t have a problem getting back to the basics again. Remember always to check in regularly, but not become obsessed with it by any means.
- We get lazy when it comes to exercise. This is a big one too, and I can become guilty as well. When we start our weight loss journey, things are great because we always put in that extra effort every day. When the weight comes off, and we start looking the way we want, the laziness starts to set in. We may skip a workout, do a lot less incidental exercise or spend more time away from doing something active than what we should. Although it is a good idea to scale back on your exercise volume, it’s not ok to dismiss exercise continuously. We need to stay active for continual body weight maintenance, but we have to think about training quality, rather than quantity. Lifting weights is a far better option than endless cardio. Building muscle gives you a metabolic edge over others. Incidental exercise is fantastic, so is walking. These are easy to do several times a day, without a lot of thought. If you have an iWatch, always keep your activity tracker within your reach. Monitor steps and activity levels. Allow this to keep you accountable. I use it every day, and it’s a great tool to keep me engaged in achieving my goals.
- Cheat meals turn into cheat days. This is dangerous territory here, and many factors can bring it on. I always tell clients that a cheat meal is essential, as it helps eliminate cravings and give you a well-earned break from clean eating daily. But when these meals become full days, we have a significant problem on our hands! Junk food is not how we want to be eating daily. For starters, it’s a red zone for our health and wellbeing, let alone our body fat levels and weight. Stop and think to yourself, the healthy and nourishing meals you will be missing out on in compensation of the junk food. Your body won’t be getting any vitamins and minerals, leaving it susceptible to viruses, ill health, and depression. Have your one cheat meal per week – make it memorable by sharing the moment with a friend or family member. Just remember, we aim to fill our body with nourishment. It’s not a trash can for pleasure.
To continue to maintain our weight, we need to be on high alert of the points above and catch ourselves before those good habits we’ve spent a while to grow and develop, begin to magnify into our most significant setbacks.
One thing I’d like to leave you with is this:
The number one cause of weight rebound you need to know right now!
The number one rebound of weight gain is stress. Stress happens all the time, but even more so when we change our environment in some way. Perhaps we’ve had to leave our city, our friends, changed jobs or maybe became redundant. These events can all lead to becoming significant stress, causing our eating habits to shift.
It may not necessarily evolve into negative eating habits, but we still can’t get away with consuming excessive consumptions of the good stuff! This includes protein, veggies and carbs. Our bodies don’t need a tone of energy unless we are athletes training hours per day. Just remember this, been a giant fork in the road for me now, and for many years. Thankfully I can spot it before it gets out of control, although it’s not always been as easy as I type these words to you.
Be aware of stress, what it does to your eating, sleeping and lifestyle habits. Address them accordingly and be completely honest about it all. This is life, and we need to be super vigilant about our practices and behaviours.
I will soon be launching an educational course on weight loss and how to maintain it for life. We will be deep-dive into dieting, how we can place an armour around ourselves to make sure we continuously eliminate the rebound effect. Please email me if you would like to be put on the waiting list.
I hope you found this article useful and I would love you to upvote it if you did. Please also join me on my various social platforms and do go ahead and download your new year’s resolution pack – which has seven days of free nourishing recipes. I’m also on Instagram.
