You’ve reached your goal weight – good for you. Now comes the hard part.

Researchers report that two years after successfully reaching their target weight, most dieters weight more than they did before they started dieting.

These findings confirm that while losing weight is hard, keeping the weight off can be even harder.

Here are some proven techniques for ensuring that your weight doesn’t creep back up and negate all the hard work you did while dieting:

Tip #1. Keep Dieting

You’ve proved that you can stick to an effective diet and lose weight. Don’t erase all that hard work by going back to your old bad habits.

There’s an old country saying that’s relevant here: “Dance with the one that brung you.”

If you’ve achieved success through calorie counting, keep counting calories. If you melted pounds away by limiting your consumption of carbs, keep away from bread and pasta.

It doesn’t matter whether you’ve eliminated sugar or increased protein intake or adopted a caveman diet.

The point is: It worked. So keep doing it. You can afford to eat a bit more if you’re maintaining weight, rather than actively trying to shed pounds. But stick to the diet that works for you…because it works for you.

Tip #2. Don’t Rationalize Binge Eating

It’s tempting to relax a bit when you’ve reached your target weight. So when your co-workers invite you along for pizza and beer, you think to yourself, “Just once can’t hurt.”

Those doughnuts look good – what could be the harm of having just one? Mathematically, this strategy seems sound enough. A maintenance diet really doesn’t have to be as strict as a weight-loss diet; you should be able to indulge in the occasional treat.

But it turns out math doesn’t tell the whole story. There’s a word for people who adopt these rationalizations: fat.

Tip #3. Exercise

Your body can’t help noticing that you have shed 15 or 20 percent of your weight.

Evolution has ensured that human beings can endure famine conditions by shifting the body into a sort of “starvation mode” in which metabolic rates are decreased and a higher percentage of the calories we eat gets converted into body fat.

Your new, trim body requires fewer calories than your pre-diet body needed. One way to bridge the gap is to exercise. Researchers say that people who are successful at maintaining weight loss exercise about 60 minutes a day.

It doesn’t have to be strenuous exercise – brisk walking counts. And you don’t have to do it all at once.

But you’ve got to do something to pump up your metabolism to negate the effects of your body’s hormonal famine mode. Plus, you’ll be building up muscle mass, which burns off more calories than body fat.

Tip #4. Weigh Yourself Every Day

Researchers have found that people who are successful at maintaining weight loss weigh themselves every day and record the data in a log or on a chart. For an even higher chance of success,

Dieters who log their weight and meals – without being instructed to make any other changes in diet or behavior – lose weight and keep it off. Researchers have various theories about why this works, but they disagree, and ultimately it doesn’t matter. They all agree the strategy works – so use it.

Tip #5. Avoid Temptation

Remember when you changed your route to work so you avoided the doughnut shop on the way? Keep it up. Bakeries, restaurants, and activities that are associated with dietary transgression are still off-limits.

If your bowling team always celebrates with high-calorie burgers and cocktails, bowling with them will eventually lead you to fall off the wagon and regain the weight you worked so hard to lose.

Take yourself out of harm’s way and find another way to socialize.

Tip #6. Enlist Friends and Family

It used to be that people were embarrassed to tell friends that they were dieting. But times have changed.

Now there’s no shame – in fact, people boast about it. So let your family and friends know that you’re watching what you eat.

At least some of them will take the hint and bring a fruit salad with them to the pot-luck instead of fried chicken or mayo-based potato salad. Every little bit helps.



Tip #7. Chew Food Thoroughly

According to a report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, people who chew each bite 40 times – as compared to the 15 times most people chew – had lower levels of a hormone called ghrelin in their bloodstreams 90 minutes after the meal.

Maybe you’ve heard of ghrelin – dieters call it the “hunger hormone” because it helps stimulate the part of the brain that makes you feel hungry.

Chewing food longer somehow reduces the level of ghrelin in your system, and as a result, you’ll be less likely to cave in to hunger later.

Tip #8. Set Goals

Goal-setting is easy when you’re dieting: You just chart progress toward your target weight. Experts say setting attainable goals is a key component of sticking to a successful diet. So continue to set goals.

What counts? What about biking to work two days this week? Replacing two cooked meals with fresh fruit? Switching to unsweetened coffee?

Psychologists say that the rewards we give ourselves for meeting goals can stimulate the same parts of the brain that used to light up when we indulged in rich desserts.

Tip #9. Embrace Grazing

The traditional three-meals-a-day diet is dangerous. It’s easy to overeat at mealtime when you have been fasting for hours. So do yourself a favor: Snack throughout the day.

Have a piece of fruit or a handful of nuts every hour or 90 minutes, then sit down for smaller meals. Researchers say this “grazing” approach to food eliminates metabolic peaks and valleys that sabotage diets.

Tip #10. Shop Smart

It’s easier to avoid fatty, high-calorie foods if they’re not in your refrigerator to begin with. Take charge of your family’s grocery shopping and put everyone on a healthy diet.

They may grumble at first – and you may have to set aside one shelf for snack foods they are unwilling to give up – but the fact is that almost everyone would benefit from switching to the same weight-maintenance diet you’re on. It’s not just slimming, it’s healthier.

Tip #11. Get Enough Sleep

You feel tired when your body is low on energy. If your energy shortage is due to sleep deprivation, there’s only one quick way to restore pep: Eat sugar and carbs.

Tired people crave junk food because they need the quick energy to get through the day. If you are getting enough sleep, the junk food is easier to resist.

Tip #12. Eat Breakfast

Studies show that people who have successfully kept weight off for two years or more had a surprising fact in common: They ateevery day.

When researchers looked at the statistics for those who skipped breakfast, they found that almost all weighed more than they did before they started dieting.

No one seems to be quite sure whether eating breakfast is a key to weight maintenance or if there is some other factor that makes the causes more complex.

But it does seem that eating breakfast signals the body to awaken its metabolism to active day-time rates, which burn more calories.

Tip #13. Stick With It

Dieting is as an unpleasant chore. You have to give up foods you love. You have to exercise. You have to find a new way of eating based on foods that are intrinsically less satisfying.

You may imagine that you can go back to “normal” eating once you’ve reached your target weight, but research says you can’t – or you will be one of the 80 percent of dieters who regain all their weight within a year.

To beat the odds, stick with the diet until it is no longer a burden, but a lifestyle. Once you’re fully acclimated to it, a healthy weight-maintenance diet can come to seem delicious and satisfying. You just have to give it time.

You should feel proud of your weight-loss success. You worked hard to get where you are. Follow these rules to ensure all that hard work wasn’t for nothing.