Leading up to a community meeting, the topic that people wanted to discuss was calories — how many should I be eating, things like macros. One discussion that came up that I thought was really interesting was about the maintenance mindset in relation to everyday living.
I think that’s a really good topic to talk about.
I come from a background of yo-yo dieting. I was either extremely on a diet or extremely off a diet. It wasn’t until I established the maintenance mindset that I was truly successful. I was able to lose 170 pounds and keep it off.
What it means is I would run everything under the standard of can I sustain this for the rest of my life? Am I going to eat dessert on my birthday? Am I going to enjoy Thanksgiving foods on Thanksgiving? Am I going to have those times? If the answer was yes, I was not going to abstain forever, then I had to work that into my weight loss regimen. I wouldn’t just pass up everything all the time.
It was a pivotal change in my thinking.
Now, that’s a long-term maintenance mindset. You could even truncate that down to looking at what you’re currently doing. How long can you sustain what you’re currently doing? If you’re doing an extremely regimented eating plan, an extremely regimented workout plan, and you feel like it’s too much or it’s not something that suits you, how long can you maintain that?
The maintenance mindset can be about long-term maintenance, meaning 50 years out, or it could be how long can I sustain this program that I’m currently on? Can I even make it a month?
Start looking at those small habit changes you can make that you can sustain for the rest of your life. Establish those habits one at a time so you can be successful. It’s not about doing some crazy deprivation diet or some extreme workout regimen.
It’s really about doing what you’re doing now and tweaking it so you can maintain it. I would love to hear from you.
What do you think the maintenance mindset is? How can you apply it to your own life?