Sustainable healthy weight loss requires a strong solid foundation that can withstand the struggles you will experience. Building this strong foundation is often challenging because there is a lot of confusing and misleading information out there. Because of this, it is easy to jump in and get sucked in this crazy never ending world of diets without any strategy. Often, these diets will not result in sustainable healthy weight loss.
An important thing to remember is that healthy weight loss involves much more than reducing calories and increasing physical activity. For starters, it can be an emotional roller coaster littered with obstacles that threaten to undo all your hard work.
Secondly, there is no one size fits all. While the basics are the same, you must figure out what works for you. To top that off, the huge amount of confusing and conflicting information on the internet can be enough to send your head into a spin. This can make it difficult to wrap your head around basic concepts. When this happens, it becomes impossible to sustain a healthy weight loss.
This guide is the good news. For it will help you become aware of what to expect so that you can gather useful tools together. Follow it and you will gain an upper hand, which is the power to control the way you react to and deal with these challenges. Most importantly, it will be the foundation that will support your strategy, choices and day to day decisions that will bring you closer to your goal.
1. Your mindset matters

One of my failures was the mistake of treating weight loss as a short-term project that would eventually come to an end. This mindset did nothing for me except bring me back to where I had to start all over again. Come to think of it, when a project ends, there is no need to continue doing the things that helped you complete it. You celebrate your achievement then go back to your old normal life. Going back to my old life took me right back where I started!
Instead, you must treat weight loss as a healthy lifestyle, a lifetime evolving project. A lifestyle is long term until you decide to change it. Adopting this mindset means you can only start as you mean to carry on long term. And you can only make it long term if the strategy you choose, the measures you put in place and the day-to-day choices you make are sustainable. See the difference?
With all that said, you can only sustain weight loss if you are in it for yourself..
This is because weight loss is personal and can be lonely especially in the early days when you are not sure what to do. It is the “what’s in it for me” that motivates us to carry on when the going gets tough. Getting rid of those joint pains, high blood pressure, breathlessness and other weight related problems is for you. These direct benefits will help you adhere to your plan. Sticking with your healthy weight loss plan will lead to your weight loss goal.
You cannot lose weight just because other people think it’s the right thing to do. Or, perhaps you want to impress someone, or become acceptable to them. It must come from within you. It is your body, your choice, your health and your reasons.
This also means, no amount of personal training, free gym membership or useful information will help unless you truly have the desire to change. You are most likely to put your all into something that not only you decide to do but is also beneficial to you.
So yes, your mind also needs to be reframed by giving it a mental workout and feeding it the right thoughts! Only then will you be able to….
2. Stay in control for long term sustenance.

To sustain weight loss, you must stay in control. Before my weight loss success, I was a fully fledged member of the Yo-yo dieter’s club for several years to the point where it had become a lifestyle. This was a result of jumping from one diet to another on and off so much that I lost control. Whatever diet I happened to jump onto, drove me to the next diet as fast as it could and handed me over.
I got tired and frustrated of it all and the years stolen from me. Taking a step back and looking at why this was not working is what saved me and gave me control. That was the beginning of positive permanent change that led to a healthy weight loss.
So, how then can you stay in control?
Invest time and effort in learning. Knowledge is powerful when it comes to sustainable healthy weight loss, maintenance and healthy eating. A good place to start is learning the simple but important basics of weight loss such as calorie counting, healthy eating habits, what makes a diet balanced and physical activities to help you lose weight. But most importantly, learn about yourself and what works for you.
You will be amazed how the knowledge you gain will direct you towards helpful supportive choices. If you put in the work, you will understand things better and everything will start falling into place. Learn, learn, and continue learning. Tailor to your needs then, practice, practice, practice. What you must remember is that this is going to be long term. Therefore:
Keeping it realistic, simple, and personalised makes it easier to stick to long term. While it is true that weight loss is a simple game of maths, it is just a starting point. A healthy sustainable weight loss goes way beyond counting calories to ensure your body gets all the nutrients it needs.
Simple does not mean blunt or tasteless. Playing around with spices improves the flavour of food and replaces the need for high calorie oils and sauces. My meals are affordable, easy to prepare, tasty, and nutritious. But, it hasn’t always been that way. It took some learning and experimenting with different food combinations. Some things worked, others didn’t. A few experimental meals ended up in the bin! Give it a go and see what you come up with.
Planning your meals ahead is a great weight loss habit that makes sticking to your diet plan easier. You are most likely to overeat when you pull anything out of the fridge when hungry.
When you have a plan and follow it through, you become consistent. You will also be able to assess the effectiveness of your plan. It is not possible to correct something when you have no idea what is wrong in the first place. This is how you stay in control to sustain weigh loss. However, for you to be able to plan, you must know what you want to achieve first. Therefore…
Setting SMART goals is an important weight loss habit that will lead to sustainable weight loss. I will not discuss this here because it has already been discussed in another post. Click the link to read more.
3. Make it a habit and you will soon get there.

You have heard it all before, but it’s true that we are what we repeatedly do. To achieve sustainable healthy weight loss and keep it off, you must adopt healthy eating habits and increase physical activity. Then make them part of your life. But it does take some effort, time and willingness to change the things you are used to. That’s why….
Small steps are the way to go. These small steps will build up, leading you to where you want to end up. We live in a world where temporary instant gratification, quick fix results and sense of entitlement have become a way of life. This does not work when it comes to weight loss.
So, let’s forget the severe calorie restriction, pseudoscience based diets and daily long punishing exercises. For these and other unhealthy practices will most likely take you right back where you started if not further, because you will crush and burn. That will be your body saying no to abuse.
Always keep in mind that It’s not just about getting there, but getting there and staying there. I spend years shuffling though various diets, going back and forth, on and off with not much to show. Now, Compare this to the 2 years I spent doing it the right way and lost 6 stone. Save yourself time and stress by changing a few things at a time, make them a habit, then add more things.
Adherence and consistency are key when it comes to weight loss. Your success and failure will be determined by what you will persistently do. Eating one doughnut or going over your calorie limit once will not make you gain weight. Just as one day of eating lettuce will not make you lose weight either. Get this right and you will start seeing things move in the right direction.
How then will you know that what you are doing is working or what needs fine tuning?
4. Monitor Progress.

A strategy is only good if it is effective. Whenever we set goals, we chose a strategy and put systems in place to support it. However, it is important to evaluate occasionally to see whether everything is working as it should. However, you can only monitor that which you persistently do for a period.
This takes us back to planning, consistency and staying in control. This could be anything from your meals, managing your time, exercise routine, just to name a few. This way you will be able to know what works, what doesn’t work and how you can move forward.
My advice is not to get fixated on one method of measuring progress. The scale is only one of the tools you can use but the numbers it displays do not always tell the whole story (click here to find out why). Especially at a stage where you have lost a significant amount of weight.
How about looking at the trend rather than the small up and down fluctuations here and there? A general upward trend is a win-win. Apart from physical changes, there are various methods you can use to measure progress. Here is what I noticed on myself.
I could run on the treadmill instead of just walking, with the speed and intensity gradually increasing over time. I was no longer huffing and puffing with every movement during exercises. My blood pressure and cholesterol levels were on a downward trend. Joint pains were becoming less and less. These are only some of the benefits I got. Now, if this is not progress I don’t know what else is.
It is important to remember that your body is work in progress. It cannot achieve everything at the same time but it is continuously achieving something that benefits you. You only need to give it a chance and look at the whole picture.
So, what are we saying?
There is a minefield of weight loss information out there. In order not to get overwhelmed, you must build a strong base that will remain standing when the storm hits. Feeding your mind the right thoughts, staying in control of your weight loss strategy, adopting healthy habits and monitoring progress are the stones you need to lay down a strong, solid foundation. This way, you are guaranteed an achievable and sustainable healthy weight loss.
But, you must also be able to avoid common misleading weight loss practices that will get in the way of your weight loss progress. Click here to find out what these are.