Strike a Balance

Weight loss – check

Maintain weight lost – skipped

And so, weight gained –check

What does strike a balance tell you? What do the above mentioned stages suggest? We are all just busy trying out stunts to lose weight, achieve it and be happy. But have we thought of the next step? Have we given maintenance a thought? How hard can it be to maintain weight loss? Or rather how exactly can it be maintained?

Maintenance might really sound as a no big deal to most of you’ll and that’s why mostly skipped but actually it’s the second most difficult thing to achieve after weight loss. This in fact is one of the most frequently asked questions by my clients on the very first day of their workout routine.

Each time a client comes to me and has just begun to exercise, has the most expected question to ask. Will I put on weight if I stop gymming? Will aerobics make me put on weight if I discontinue it? And the answer to both the questions is NO. You cannot gain the weight lost because of a certain exercise type but yes you can if you omit the next step which is “maintenance”. The one important step each of us conveniently manages to leave out.

Weight gain cannot be activity specific. Just because you have put on weight after leaving a particular class whether aerobics or dance does not mean that that particular form is the culprit. The culprit is YOU! Weight gain is actually due to the sudden inactivity in your schedule, the sudden drop of BMR due to the inactive state. The logic is simple. We end up gaining weight when there is an imbalance in what we eat and how we burn it out, when the calorie consumption is greater than the calorie expenditure it leads to weight gain. It has nothing to do with any exercise routine or form. Let us see how.

Take for instance walking. Walking is considered to be the safest and simplest form of exercise. If you have been walking religiously for one hour everyday and one fine day decide to quit as you have reached your target weight and are feeling fit, or feeling bored and monotonous. The benefits and results of walking are not going to last for a lifetime. Your body from an active level has suddenly reached inactivity whereas your food consumption and your lifestyle remains the same. Your body will eventually stop burning calories as fast as it used to due to the drop in the metabolic rate, resulting into am imbalance which results into slow yet steady weight gain. Even the simplest form of exercise can lead to weight gain if not correctly managed. Then why blame the gym or any other form of exercise for that matter.

On the other hand weight loss cannot be maintained by plainly dieting or eating less. This in fact adversely affects the body. You need to strike a balance somehow. If you’re bored of the gym try another form of exercise, change your routine and do what you like doing or what you do best. If you’ve reached your ideal weight and want to go off the gym routine for a while don’t end up doing nothing at all. What needs to be avoided is complete inactivity which naturally happens as we are too proud and happy admiring the hard earned weight loss and dream figure. This is where maintenance comes into picture and trust me it is easy to achieve.

So, strike a balance, a balance between food and activity and you would have mastered maintenance. The amount of calories consumed need to be equal to the amount of calories expended. Eat right and burn it out correctly as well. It can’t get any simpler than this.