How can I avoid rebound weight gain?

Ayesha from Birmingham asks:

How can I avoid rebound weight gain?

As someone you used to be a yo-yo dieter for years, I know this is almost more of a worry than actually losing weight itself.

For me, I’ve found over many years of experimenting with different diets, that the only way to avoid rebound weight gain is to lose weight very slowly (no more than 1 kg per month). This way, you have a chance to rethink the way you eat.

Instead of thinking to yourself “I’m on a diet, but as soon as it’s over, I’ll breathe a sigh of relief and get back to eating normally”, you start to think of the way you eat as being the new normal and it just continues indefinitely.

Of course, if the new normal means that you’re losing weight, eventually you will need to adjust this a little bit, but by then, your body will have got used to your changed eating habits, your stomach will have shrunk a bit and you’ll find it’s harder to eat more, than it was in the past.

When you do need to adjust your diet, the trick is to increase the amount of protein you eat, NOT more carbs. That way, you will feed your muscles better and if you couple this with increasing the level of exercise that you do, you will build and tone your muscles and feel stronger.

I hope this helps.