Maintaining Weight Loss: How to Exercise Less without Gaining

After the pounds you've wanted to shed are off, maintaining your weight is the next challenge. Weight maintenance is best done through a combination of diet and exercise. You'll adjust both to ensure you aren't losing any more weight--or gaining weight back. You can scale back your exercise regimen and still stay at the weight you've reached, but you need to take certain steps to ensure that your weight will stay constant. Here are some guidelines to follow to exercise less without gaining back the weight.

1. Keep Your Diet in Check

It's only possible to exercise less when you also pay close attention to what you're eating. You don't necessarily have to calorie count, but you do need to focus on eating a healthy, nutrient-rich diet that's low in sugar and saturated fat. You can find all kinds of calorie calculators online. You'll enter in a few numbers (such as your age, height, current weight and activity level) and the calorie calculator will tell you how many calories you should be taking in if you want to lose weight or maintain weight. From there, you can adjust your diet so that you stay on track to maintain your new figure. You'll be unsuccessful in maintaining your weight if you immediately cut down on your exercise and go back to bad eating habits after you've reached your weight loss goal. You have to keep up with it.

2. Find Workouts You Really Enjoy and Do Those Every Week

When you're trying to lose weight you end up working out just about every day. You probably even do workouts you don't truly enjoy just so you keep active. When you aren't looking to lose more weight, you can cut back on your workouts and choose to only do things you truly enjoy. Take one or two of your favorite classes each week or schedule in a 30 minute walk or 30 minutes doing your favorite Pilates (or other type of exercise) video every Saturday morning. Doing only the workouts you enjoy, and not feeling forced to do them for the sake of weight loss, will help working out to become a part of your lifestyle. You can workout less each week, but make sure to make those workouts count. Work out for at least 30-60 minutes at least three days each week.

3. Be Active Every Day

Even if you have scaled back on your regular scheduled workouts, you still need to be active in some way every day. Try to find little ways to slip physical activity into your daily routine. Take a couple walks around the block for fresh air after dinner. Park in the farthest possible spot away from the door at the grocery store. Take the stairs at work. These little things will add up and keep the pounds from creeping back on.

The best way to exercise less without gaining is to simply aim to be active as much as possible. Make a commitment to yourself to take care of your body through continuing to eat healthy and workout several times each week.

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