You lost the weight. Now what?

Step up to your new maintenance calories, keep the protein, lifting and walking, and keep weighing every morning. Set a line about 5 pounds above your trend and act the week you cross it. The first year decides most of it.

The day the diet ends

The usual plan for the end of a diet is no plan. People celebrate for a week or two, ease back into the meals they had before, and promise to be careful. A better way to see it is that you were never on a diet. You were changing how you live, and there’s no going back to normal afterward, because the old normal is what put the weight on.

The weight comes back because the body that finished the diet needs less food than the one that started it, and wants more. In a 2020 study, 171 women lost about 26 pounds (12 kg) on a diet. A year later they had put back about half of it, and after two years almost all of it.

A smoke alarm for your weight

A smoke alarm is cheap, and it goes off while the fire is still a pan on the stove. Your regain line does the same job. Pick a number about 5 pounds above your trend at the end of the diet, or about 3% of your weight if you’re heavier. Your trend is your weekly average, never one morning.

1. Under the line. Carry on. Swings of a pound or two are water and the weekend.
2. Crossing it for a week. Log everything for two weeks, weekends included. Most of the time you find the cause.
3. Over it for two weeks. Go back to a small deficit, 200 to 300 calories a day, until the trend is back under, then return to maintenance.

Holidays are where the line earns its place. In a European study of 1,421 adults keeping weight off, weight rose 1.35% over Christmas on average, and much of it was still there months later.

Your first twelve weeks

The rise in the first two weeks scares people back into dieting. In one trial, athletes who took a week at maintenance after three weeks of dieting gained about 1.3 pounds (0.6 kg). Their lean mass, which includes water and glycogen, went up by about the same, and their fat didn’t change. Your maintenance calories after a diet covers how to set the number.

What do people who keep it off do?

The National Weight Control Registry follows thousands of Americans who lost at least 30 pounds and kept it off for at least a year. Members in a 2014 analysis had lost about 70 pounds on average, and ten years later most of them still had more than 10% of their weight off.

• They move a lot. Members average about an hour of activity a day.
• They weigh themselves. About a third weigh in every day.
• They eat about the same every day. Their diets look alike on weekdays and weekends.
• Most eat breakfast. 78% eat it every day. In a trial of 309 adults, though, eating or skipping breakfast didn’t change weight loss, so do what keeps you full.
• They eat fewer calories than most people. Registry members describe a low calorie, low fat diet. A low carb diet worked about as well for weight loss in the DIETFITS trial, so pick the one you can keep.

The people in the registry who gained weight back were the ones who cut their leisure activity, weighed themselves less, relaxed their control over eating and ate more fat. The ones who did best had lost more to begin with and had already kept it off longer.

The registry only includes people who succeeded, so it can’t prove the habits caused it. It’s still the best picture we have of people who kept it off for years.

Why your appetite stays up

After a diet your hunger doesn’t reset when you stop. In a 2011 study, 50 adults lost about 30 pounds on a ten week very low calorie diet. A year later their hunger hormones were still shifted in the direction that makes you eat, and they felt hungrier than before they started.

A 2016 analysis put a size on it. For every kilogram (2.2 pounds) people lost, their appetite rose by about 100 calories a day, more than three times as much as their burn fell.

That pull is the reason the habits from how to eat less without being hungry do even more after the diet than during it. Protein at every meal, whole food, fiber and sleep are what let you eat at maintenance without being hungry all the time.

If you’re coming off a GLP-1 drug

The drug turned your hunger down. When it stops, the hunger comes back, and so does the weight unless something else is holding it.

• STEP 1 extension. People who stopped semaglutide, and the lifestyle program with it, put back two thirds of their weight loss within a year.
• SURMOUNT-4. People switched from tirzepatide to placebo after 36 weeks regained about 14% of their weight over the next year. Those who stayed on it lost another 5.5%.

Decide with your prescriber whether to stop. If you do, treat the last dose like the last day of a diet. Step to maintenance calories, eat protein at every meal, keep lifting, weigh every morning and set your regain line before you stop. Body scans in the tirzepatide trial found about a quarter of the weight lost was lean mass, so lifting during and after the drug helps you keep the muscle that holds your burn up. There’s more on how GLP-1 drugs work.

When to point the habits at something new

Once your weight has held for two or three months, you can aim the same habits at a new goal. Lifting for strength gives you a reason to keep training, and a slow gain of muscle gives you a reason to keep eating protein. Bulking after a cut covers when and how.