Want to Maintain Your Weight? Four Exercise Tips

Once you've reached your weight loss goal, the next step is working to maintain your weight. Maintaining your new weight is best done through a combination of diet and exercise. You can focus your efforts on one or the other, but the best results come from doing both. Here are some exercise tips to help you to maintain your weight after you've shed some pounds.

Tip One: Hit the Gym At Least Three Times Per Week

Once you've reached your weight loss goal you can scale back on going to the gym four to six times a week. Unless you're not eating a healthy diet with a reasonable caloric intake, continuing to exercise strenuously on a daily basis will make you lose more weight. However, you want to stay in the habit of exercising regularly if you truly want to keep the weight off. Aim to go to the gym at least three times a week and try to be active for at least 30 minutes every day.

Tip Two: Walk Daily if Possible

If you're looking for something active to do everyday to keep yourself in top physical shape, start taking walks every day. They're easy to fit into your schedule and can be dually productive: walking is a great way to stay fit and also help you calm down after a long and stressful day. Since walks typically aren't high in intensity, you won't feel ravished afterward. The more we work out, the more calories our body needs. We tend to eat more when working out practically every day of the week. With walks, our body doesn't need those extra calories for energy. Walks keep you active without messing with your appetite and caloric intake.

Tip Three: Focus On Strength Training

Many people focus most of their attention on cardiovascular activity when they're trying to lose weight. For maintenance purposes, consider making two of your three maintenance workouts strength training sessions. Muscle burns more calories than fat, so it makes sense, from a weight maintenance perspective, to focus on building muscle to help you more effectively burn calories once you've reached the weight you'd at which you'd like to remain. You can lift free weights a couple days a week or take a strength training group exercise class. Focus on toning your body instead of doing cardio all of the time.

Tip Four: Find Workouts You Truly Enjoy

It's easy to run on the treadmill for 45 minutes when you're working toward wearing that bikini, but once you reach your goal it becomes harder to make yourself continue with your regular disciplined routine. Find physical activities that you actually enjoy so that maintaining your weight is fun. Taking a couple of fun group exercise classes several times each week or trying new workout DVDs at home will keep you from lapsing. You don't want weight maintenance to feel like a chore. It won't if you find exercises you truly enjoy doing.

Again, the best weight maintenance results come through a combination of diet and exercise. Follow these tips and eat a healthy diet and you'll maintain your weight.

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