After successfully maintaining your weight loss or weight gain, your mind has begun to wander. Your healthy diet falls apart, you relax when it comes to drinks (Yes, I’m talking about alcohol), and your exercise regiment is becoming a distant memory…Unsurprisingly, your new wardrobe is snug and getting tighter as your goal weight body fades every day, and now you’re panicking as you creep closer to your starting weight.

You must act now before you leave your weight maintenance range altogether! Use this No. 1 tip to stop your weight relapse turning into weight regain.

Before you read this article, make sure that you know the difference between ‘relapse’ and ‘regain’. A relapse is when you are fairly close to your goal weight despite not looking as fit or feeling as comfortable in your clothes. Regain is when it will take many weeks or months to return to your goal weight, and you need to reduce your calories to lose again because you’ve gained fat, not water weight.

During my weight loss journey, I regained 15 lbs (approx 7.5 kg) twice at different periods. Sometimes I was exercising, sometimes I was watching those calories, and sometimes I noted how my clothes felt. My weight rose for months until I snapped out of the weight relapse as it turned into weight regain.

What woke me up?

Exercise? Nope. Overeating? No. Snug clothes? Not at all.

It was the scale.

Now it seems so obvious, but at the time it wasn’t.

I assumed that staying on track and maintaining my motivation would be enough, but I was in denial. I was still exercising, but short durations a few times a week at low intensity wasn’t enough.  I was still counting calories, but the ‘cheat day’ (mine was really a binge day…) kept sabotaging the rest of the week’s efforts. Very few of my clothes were snug because they were never loose to begin with.

Where was the scale during this period? Under the bed. Buried in the wardrobe. In the bathroom. Basically, it was anywhere but under my feet. Avoiding the scale let my denial continue until my slight weight relapse (5 lbs or so) had become weight regain (15 lbs and counting).

What lesson was learned?

Always be accountable to stop regaining the fat. Regularly step on the scale (or use your measuring tape) because you can’t hide when the truth is staring back at you. If you want to maintain forever and never have to lose weight again, you need to be accountable if not to something then to someone. How often should you weigh or measure yourself? That’s up to you, but I advise you to do it often if you want to maintain your healthy weight forever.

Whenever you fear weight regain (or reloss for those who were underweight), hold yourself accountable. Step on the scale and/or measure your body often. If you’ve been overeating and inactive for weeks, expect the scale and measuring tape to show significant relapse, possibly even weight regain.

Always believe in yourself. You’ve lost the weight before and can do it again. Since regaining those 30 lbs, I have lost 40 lbs and counting, not to mention the reduction in my body fat by over 15%. Always remember, if you’ve conquered weight loss or weight gain then you can maintain your healthy weight forever. Good luck, maintainer!

If you need support with getting back on track with your calorie intake, try joining others who struggle with the same issue.