Maintaining Your Weight
Most diets give the false impression that weight maintenance is a simple task. They assure you that, with a few modifications to your lifestyle, your weight will not fluctuate as long as you adhere to their formula.
Anyone who has ever dieted and then tried to maintain his or her target weight knows that it’s not easy. No matter how hard we fight it, our weight fluctuates. Perhaps work gets busy and exercise falls to the wayside for a week or two. A friend or relative comes into town and we find ourselves eating out every meal for five days in a row. A simple formula fails in a complex system, and everyday life is far more complex than most diet plans are willing to admit. In the most extreme cases, these formulas fail so spectacularly that the dieter regains all of their lost weight and more.
There’s no secret formula for weight maintenance. Instead, we designed Drink Your Carbs to be flexible enough to adapt to a constantly changing lifestyle.
First, you need to determine your target weight. Some people have an immediate objective in mind, but it helps to check with a professional. A doctor or personal trainer will be able to help you identify a healthy range. At first, your goal should be the upper end of that range. Over time, as your body grows accustomed to your new weight, feel free to dial that number downward.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends using Body Mass Index, or BMI, to figure out your goal weight. They have online charts which, by lining up your height and weight, will tell you your current and ideal body mass. We don’t care that the BMI scale is endorsed by hundreds of government scientists. We think the system sucks.
Anyone who has ever dieted and then tried to maintain his or her target weight knows that it’s not easy. No matter how hard we fight it, our weight fluctuates. Perhaps work gets busy and exercise falls to the wayside for a week or two. A friend or relative comes into town and we find ourselves eating out every meal for five days in a row. A simple formula fails in a complex system, and everyday life is far more complex than most diet plans are willing to admit. In the most extreme cases, these formulas fail so spectacularly that the dieter regains all of their lost weight and more.
There’s no secret formula for weight maintenance. Instead, we designed Drink Your Carbs to be flexible enough to adapt to a constantly changing lifestyle.
First, you need to determine your target weight. Some people have an immediate objective in mind, but it helps to check with a professional. A doctor or personal trainer will be able to help you identify a healthy range. At first, your goal should be the upper end of that range. Over time, as your body grows accustomed to your new weight, feel free to dial that number downward.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends using Body Mass Index, or BMI, to figure out your goal weight. They have online charts which, by lining up your height and weight, will tell you your current and ideal body mass. We don’t care that the BMI scale is endorsed by hundreds of government scientists. We think the system sucks.
Case Study in the Failure of the Body Mass Index: We have a close friend who epitomizes our objection to the BMI scale. This friend is very athletic. He works out five days a week in the gym. On weekends he goes for long bike rides, dragging himself and his road bike over mountain passes high above Denver, Colorado. His body fat hovers around 12 percent. He is also seriously built; his muscles would still be visible if you dressed him in a burka. By all definitions, he is super fit. He also happens to be 5’ 4” and, according to the BMI scale, he is morbidly obese. This is just plain stupid.
Apparently, these failures are not uncommon for anyone who is short, tall or carries a lot of muscle mass. Until BMI is updated to take people like our friend into account, we recommend that you ask your doctor or a personal trainer at your gym to help you calculate your ideal weight. They will give you a far more accurate answer based on your body type and muscle mass.
Once your goal is reached, you need to monitor your weight regularly to see if you are still losing, gaining or holding steady. Your weight will fluctuate. There is no such thing as keeping your weight steady. Anyone who claims otherwise has never stepped on a scale twice in the same day. The key to maintenance is to keep your fluctuations within a reasonable range.
Strive to keep your weight within a three-pound range. If you fall three pounds below your goal weight, you can relax your diet a bit. If you find yourself three pounds above your goal weight, it is time to increase your adherence to Drink Your Carbs, or even consider spending time in Austerity Mode. The sooner you catch weight gain, the easier it is to stop.
You may continue to drift for a pound or two after you make an adjustment to your diet. Don’t panic. If you increase your compliance to Drink Your Carbs, using Major Morgan’s Grading Scale as your guide, your weight will drift back to your ideal range.
Strive to keep your weight within a three-pound range. If you fall three pounds below your goal weight, you can relax your diet a bit. If you find yourself three pounds above your goal weight, it is time to increase your adherence to Drink Your Carbs, or even consider spending time in Austerity Mode. The sooner you catch weight gain, the easier it is to stop.
You may continue to drift for a pound or two after you make an adjustment to your diet. Don’t panic. If you increase your compliance to Drink Your Carbs, using Major Morgan’s Grading Scale as your guide, your weight will drift back to your ideal range.
Fact: The best way not to regain lost pounds is to make adjustments the moment you put on three. A side benefit is that you will never be one of those people perpetually whining about how you need to lose five pounds.