Karen's Top 20 Tips for Weight Maintenance

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“Willpower” is not enough to lose weight and keep it off.

— Dr. Spencer Nadolsky (@DrNadolsky) March 29, 2018

Karen Parrott’s 20 Weight Maintenance Tips-

Keeping 70 pounds off 6 years. Previously obese or yo-yoing for 40 years. I’m almost 52 years old.
I’ve been in menopause 4 years. Hashimoto’s controlled with synthroid 20 years.

*edited for better formatting** My maintenance

My 2 cents:
A. It is not easy, my weight wants to come back most days
B. It becomes easier when you test out different variables and keep what works
C. Everyone has different combos of obesity root causes
D. If you have multiple root causes, weight maintenance is going to be harder
E Age, body comp, autoimmune diseases, male/female will be variables
F. Genetics play a HUGE role in strategy. FTO Obesity Genes, Type 2 Diabetes genes that have already expressed extra ghrelin gene will bite you if you don’t mind them. I hurt just thinking about this…
G. Auto-Immune diseases will play a part. Particularly thyroid auto-immune (Hashimotos, Graves, parathyroid, Cushings)
H. Other disease states, colds, flu, shingles, gout, arthritis

Here are my best tools & Tips for Weight Maintenance

1. Daily weighing and taking action every 4-5 days based on trends and shifts.
2. Fasting and eating my carbs early 6 am until noon or 1pm
3. Eating low carb so that I keep my glucose managed (by proxy insulin)
4. Eating high enough that I don’t lose my intestinal mucous (gut microbiome
   will eat my intestinal mucous if I don’t feed it some dietary fiber, gross, I know)
5. Tracking my food intake on my fitness pal (extra ghrelin makes sure I have zero full signals most days)
6. Getting support from groups or individuals if I have a lot of binge urges
7. Abstaining from my binge trigger foods (all grains, all nuts, most emulsifiers like xantham and guar gum)
8. Checking food labels and spending time identifying trigger foods
9. Making 98% of all food at home and bringing it

10 Meditation as needed (Calm, Insight Timer, Head Space)

11. Exercising 60 minutes a day, moderate- say walking (track on MFP)
12. Lift in the gym, 2X per week- or body weight exercises more at home
13. Get lab work done periodically
14. Use your glucose meter, ketone meter, and things like the bristol stool chart (gross I know) , binge urges, and acne and joint pain to customize your food template.
15. Attend conferences. Meet people who had/have a history like yours. Or even talk 23nMe results. If they have the outcome you desire adopt it, if they regain, see if you are doing something that causes regain also. Do the opposite.That’s a tough message to hear, but do you want to keep regaining or return to a normal weight weight or a best weight? ( that’s how I learned eating to satiation did not work for me- a tough lesson, but not an unsolvable problem to track food. ) If I adopted the Wheeeeeee eat all the fat all the time, well, I wouldn’t be in maintenance. Eating all the fat works for some, it doesn’t work for me and I own it.

     16 .Tell yourself that other people lose weight and are weight maintainers. Tell yourself you will be one of them and that you will take as much time as needed to get the results that you need for your best health.

17. Know if you need to be at a “normal BMI” or a higher than normal BMI with equally good health outcomes. Work, work, work to be normal if you need to for joint pain or other health outcomes like insurance discounts. I’d be disingenuous to my health and finances if I didn’t keep my weight normal.
18. Adjust your plan as you age, develop new diseases, go through menopause (female) , add any medications or adapt to any combo of the above. What I do in my late 40’s and early 50’s =/= what I’ll do in my 60’s or 70’s. I was obese from the ages of 6-46.
19. Read books or material about weight maintenance and use your own food template. Refuse to Regain- Barbara Berkeley, MD, Eric Westman, MD have loads of experience with clients and patients who don’t regain the weight.
20. Never ever stop trying or adjusting.

Onward and never stop trying.