Congratulations!
You’ve reached your weight loss goal.
Along the way, you’ve gained confidence, built strength, and established healthy habits that you can carry with you forever.
But, now that you’ve reached your goal, you might be wondering “what’s next?”
This is a common question many individuals grapple with after having finished their transformation challenge.
But, here’s the thing, while you may have crushed your transformation challenge, that’s really on the start of your fitness journey (albeit a very impressive one). Sadly, many individuals think that once they’ve reached their goal, that they’ve done everything they need to and can go right back to their old habits. Unfortunately, this is why many people fail to maintain their weight loss results.
The reality is that living a fit and healthy life is an on-going process, an evolution if you will. ‘
As you spend more time in fitness, you’ll experience new ways of training and/or eating. You’ll experiment with different sorts of recovery protocols as well as supplements.
In this article, we’ll offer suggestions on how you can adapt your mindset and change your workouts after you’ve reached your weight-loss goals.
#1 Reduce Cardio (If Desired)
There’s a high probability that when you were going through your transformation challenge you were performing both resistance-training and cardio. The reason for this is that resistance training helps build muscle and boost metabolism and cardio helps increase your overall energy expenditure during the day (which can help speed up the weight loss process) as well as support cardiovascular health.
Now that you’ve reached your weight loss goal, you can scale back the number of cardio sessions each week since you are focused on maintaining your weight and don’t need to expend as much energy each day to create a calorie deficit.
Of course, if you enjoy doing some bouts of morning cardio during the week, by all means it up! You can either scale back how many sessions you’re doing, or eat slightly more calories to offset the energy burned during the workouts so that you remain at maintenance calories.
#2 Focus on Building Strength
If you’re looking for a new challenge to tackle after you’ve hit your weight loss goal, then try shifting your focus to building lean muscle and strength. Instead of focusing on burning as many calories as possible during your workouts, your focus will be on improving your lifting performance in the gym by lifting more weight for more reps. With each passing workout, your goal is to surpass your previous best (all while maintaining good form...cheat reps don’t count!).
We understand that transitioning from weight loss to muscle building can be a struggle both mentally and physically as you may not be used to trying to gain weight (in the form of muscle) or knowing how to structure your workouts accordingly.
The 1UP Fitness App was specifically designed with this in mind and it provides customized training programs based on your age, gender, goals, experience, and equipment availability. You’ll also get access to our private Facebook group for encouragement, motivation, and answers from our staff on how best to accomplish your post-transformation challenge goals.
#3 Set a Performance Goal
Yet another spice up your training once you’ve reached your weight loss goal is to focus on accomplishing a certain performance goal, such as lifting a certain amount of weight on a specific exercise (e.g. bench pressing 225# for reps, doing 30 full range of motion dips in 3 mins, completing your first unassisted chin up, etc.).
#4 Get Sport-Specific
In addition to the other goals listed above, you can also make your training more specific towards a particular type of sport or activity instead of general health and fitness.
For instance, if you enjoy playing tennis, you can start working on improving your lower body endurance as well as your lateral speed & agility.
#5 Scale Training Volume Back
During your transformation challenge, you were pushing yourself hard mentally and physically with a combination of rigorous diet and exercise. Now that you’ve reached your weight loss goal, it’s OK to scale back on the intensity of your training. You’ve worked hard and earned a much-deserved break.
At the same time, take some time to reflect on your progress and what you’ve learned along the way. Maintaining results can be as much of a challenge for some individuals as losing weight. So take time to feel things out and get used to your new body and new lifestyle.
#6 Let Energy Levels Guide You
Transitioning from weight loss to maintenance (or muscle building) means eating more calories.
With increased calorie intake also comes increased energy levels, better mood, and greater recovery.
What this means is that you might actually start feeling motivated to start exercising more than when you were actively trying to lose weight. Don’t feel obligated to train more just because you’re eating more calories, but if the spirit moves you get after it and have some fun!
#7 Enjoy Your New Body
After you’ve reached your weight loss goal, you might not have a specific goal. Many individuals just want to be fit and healthy.
And, you know what? That’s entirely fine.
As we mentioned before, maintaining weight loss is actually more challenging than losing it initially for many people. With this in mind, focus your workouts on general mobility and strength and conditioning while abiding by the healthy eating principles you instilled during your weight loss journey.
