By Laina Worth

For the last 5 years I’ve been maintaining a 200 pound weight loss. When I started my weight loss and maintenance journey the first thing I learned, and the most important, is that I need to know what I’m eating to know what to expect on the scale.

Journaling is my most powerful tool. When I eat something, I write down what I ate, and an approximation of how many calories it was. At the end of the day, I know exactly what to expect with regards to my weight – if I went over my caloric needs for the day there won’t be any mystery how or why.

In addition to journaling, there are three other tricks I use every day to maintain my current weight:

-Predictability
-Planning
-Displacement

1. Predictability. Under normal circumstances, I am very predictable in my food choices. I eat the same things almost every day for breakfast and lunch. The foods that I eat every day I fall back on because I know the caloric content and I know they are within the correct range for maintaining my weight. Becoming a creature of habit allows me to spend less time worrying if the food I’m eating is carrying “hidden” calories – I’ve already calculated the numbers so I can relax and enjoy. Dinner is where things can get a little less predictable, but that is where my other 2 concepts come in.

2. Planning. What I mean by planning is that I have a plan when I walk into an uncertain or tempting food situation. If I’m going to the cafeteria at work for lunch, or out to dinner at a restaurant, I decide before I get there what I will be having. There is almost never a case where I sit down, look at a menu and pick the first thing that looks good, because that is how I became 200 pounds overweight in the first place. I still eat tasty food, I just peruse the menu to look for things that aren’t fried and fill my plate with mostly vegetables.
Or, if I know I’m going to be somewhere that healthy food isn’t an option (like an amusement park or fair), I will plan ahead and pack my own meal. When I am in control of what I eat, I can always rely on the scale saying what I want.

3. Displacement. I fill up on “safe” foods first before I eat foods with high caloric density. How this works in practice is that I keep fruit with me almost all the time. Fruit is as safe as it gets for me – low caloric density, lots of fiber, high water content. If I am craving something sweet, before I eat a piece of chocolate, I will eat a piece of fruit. If I still want it, then I will eat it, but frequently the fruit will take care of the craving, or fill me up enough that I forget my prior urge. If I’m out at a restaurant, I will frequently order soup as an appetizer. Not just any soup, but a water or broth based soup. This will fill me up so I can’t eat as much of the main course. I am displacing the space in my stomach with a low-calorie food leaving less room for high-calorie foods. I ballpark those soups at about 100 calories, and it’s very filling.

These are just a few of the tips and and tricks I have used to maintain my weight for over 5 years. I hope they work for you too.

Check out Laina’s interview on Fit 4 Life Radio.

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