I wrote a fairly long post on my personal blog on how I went from 90kg to 64kg. I will not repeat this on this cycling/running focused blog. It has been one and a half years since and I have maintained the same weight throughout. The deviation is around +/- 1.5kg at max. The short answer to maintaining weight is discipline and there are two things I do on a near daily basis to sustain it:
- Calorie counting. You are what you eat. Most of my initial weight loss came from reducing calorie intake. It was a lot more effective than trying to workout more to compensate for food intake. The same applies when maintaining weight. Figure out how many calories you need per day and stick to it. I use myfitnesspal to keep track of my calorie count. myfitnesspal has a massive database of food including local food in Singapore. Calorie counts are never very accurate, it is at best an estimation. Nonetheless, it is a good enough estimation for calorie counting to be effective in weight management. My target is 2,000 kcals a day. This is assuming that I take around 7,000 steps a day which is easily manageable. On days that I workout, I eat more and vice versa. In my experience, Garmin watches with 24-hour HR monitoring have quite a reliable estimation of calories burnt . This comes after a month of usage as the software needs time to understand your body patterns. This estimation helps me to figure out how much more or less I should eat. Calorie counting keeps you aware of the cost of the food you eat in terms of weight and nutrition. In doing so, you are made accountable for your meal choices.
- Daily Weighing. Calorie counting alone will not help. You have to weigh yourself consistently. I do it on weekdays at roughly the same time everyday. What has worked well for me is to weigh myself every morning after I wash up and before I leave for work. This is before I take my breakfast and is roughly around 9 hours since dinner. Keeping to this schedule ensures that the amount of food and liquid within you remains more or less constant from day to day. I weigh myself without clothes to reduce the variables at play. I use a Withings scale which automatically syncs with myfitnesspal and also Garmin Connect. It provides bone, muscle mass and water % estimation. Weighing yourself puts you in check. There is no hiding from the truth. It also provides quick feedback on how you are fueling yourself. Everybody’s day to day weight variation differs. Mine is around +/- 0.5kg so a change beyond that is a reminder to make minor adjustments. If I see trends of increasing or decreasing weight, I will make more definite changes to my food intake to curb the trend.
Weight management is a matter of discipline. Hope this helped!
