Seven ways to avoid regaining the weight you’ve lost – what researchers say

Losing weight is challenging. But as anyone who has ever successfully lost weight knows, it’s avoiding weight re-gain that’s the real challenge.

This is true no matter what method you follow to lose weight. For example, studies show that people who follow very low calorie diets (between 800-1,200 calories per day) regain between 26% and 121% of their lost weight five years after treatment. People who follow behavioural weight management programmes (such as WW, formerly Weight Watchers) regain between 30%-35% of their lost weight after one year.

Even people who use weight loss medications, such as Wegovy, are shown to have regained about two-thirds of the weight they lost one year after stopping the drug.

There are many reasons why we regain the weight we lose. First, maintaining weight loss is less rewarding than seeing the number on the scale decrease while you’re losing weight. This makes it hard to maintain motivation and continue looking after your weight.

Second, it’s often difficult to maintain the lifestyle changes we made in order to lose weight – especially if these changes are unrealistic and hard to stick with in the long-term (such as very low-calorie diets or cutting out whole food groups).

Third, weight loss can trigger increased production of hunger hormones – and can even slow your metabolism. These changes can make it difficult to...

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