10th July 2025

How to transition from weight loss to maintenance

A young woman holds out the waistband of a loose pair of jeans, indicating successful weight loss.

For many, the environment we live in is not geared towards losing weight - we drive instead of walking or cycling, we sit for long periods of time, we don’t get enough exercise and all the tastiest treats are packed full of excess nutrients we don’t really need.

That’s part of what makes losing weight so difficult, whether you attempt it by altering your diet and exercise habits alone or go down the route of weight loss medications. And even once you’ve reached your target weight, it can be challenging to understand what you should change to switch to a maintenance plan that allows you to keep the weight off long term.

How to switch from weight loss to maintenance

In order to achieve meaningful weight loss, it’s vital to create a calorie deficit - a lifestyle where you consume fewer calories than you use. That enables your body to burn stored calories, helping to reduce your overall weight.

But once you’ve reached your target weight, your goals change from weight loss to weight maintenance - and while some fluctuation is to be expected, in general your methods need to change to reduce weight loss to a more sustainable level for the long term.

It can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking that, once you’ve reached your target weight, you can return to your old behaviours. But this is one thing that is very likely to cause weight regain, meaning you lose much of the progress you’ve made.

Instead, weight maintenance is about keeping on track with your new diet and exercise regimen, but scaling back a little so you can stay at roughly the same weight rather than continuing to lose the pounds.

In practice, that might mean doing a little less exercise each week and increasing your calorie intake gradually until your weight loss reaches a plateau. But it’s important to monitor your weight as you go to find the best balance for you, adjusting your diet and exercise as needed.

How to maintain weight loss long term

According to Harvard Health, mindset is one of the most important factors in the likelihood of someone maintaining weight loss for a year or longer. The cognitive and behavioural determinants (i.e. how we think and how we act) can have the greatest impact on weight maintenance success when linked to energy intake and expenditure.

So what does that mean for those looking to maintain weight loss? Well, studies have found that some of the most impactful factors affecting self-regulation in weight maintenance are things like:

Autonomous motivation - finding motivation internally rather than relying on external factors.
Self-efficacy - believing that you are capable of learning to complete the task at hand, regardless of your current abilities.
Self-monitoring - being able to monitor your own progress rather than needing someone else to supervise or oversee you.
Flexible eating restraint - being able to indulge in unhealthy food choices occasionally and in moderation without it derailing an otherwise healthy diet.
Positive body image - viewing your body in a positive light, which can help you to make choices based on what is healthy for your overall wellbeing rather than a desire to change your body.

These are psychological factors which can be learned over the course of weight loss and weight maintenance progress, and they have an impact because they all make it easier for you to stick to a healthy routine of good diet and exercise.

For example, someone who doesn’t have self-efficacy might put off or give up on exercise out of a belief that they’ll never be good at it, or they’ll never achieve a self-imposed goal such as running a 5k.

But someone who does have that self-belief will find it easier to make a plan that will get them from their current situation to whatever goal they have, and they’ll feel more confident that they have the capability to pull it off.

At the end of the day, weight loss and weight maintenance are hard - but having a positive, can-do attitude going in can increase your chances of success. Setting up healthy habits for the long term and having strong intrinsic motivation can help to ensure you maintain your weight despite external stressors and make it easier for you to achieve your weight loss goals.