Weight Management

Getting to a Healthy Weight: Lifestyle Changes

One Woman's Story: "I see it as a whole life change. I actually get mad at people when they say, 'You've been on a diet.' I'm not on a diet. I've never been on a diet. I just changed the way I eat. I changed the way I live."—Jaci Read more about how Jaci lost 65 pounds.

What is a healthy lifestyle?

A healthy lifestyle can help you feel good, stay at a healthy weight, and have plenty of energy for both work and play. And it lowers your risk for serious health problems like high blood pressure, heart disease, and diabetes.

A healthy lifestyle means:

• Eating healthy foods.This includes fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. If you eat meat and dairy foods, choose lean meats and low-fat dairy foods most of the time. Healthy eating also means not eating too much sugar, fat, or fast foods. You can still have dessert and treats now and then. The goal is moderation. Go to the section Healthy Eating.
• Making some kind of physical activity part of your daily routine. "Physical activity" doesn't have to mean regular visits to the gym or running marathons. There are lots of other ways to fit activity into your life. Go to the section Healthy Activity.
• Not smoking. Weight gain is a big concern for many people who want to quit smoking. But many people don't gain weight. And it's more of a health risk to keep smoking than it is to gain a few extra pounds when you quit. For information, see the topic Quitting Smoking.
• Drinking only moderate amounts of alcohol.That's up to 2 drinks a day for men, 1 drink a day for women.
• Managing stress.Many people find that eating is their way of managing stress. If you have a lot of stress in your life, it can be hard to focus on making healthy changes to your lifestyle. For more information about how to deal with stress, see the topic Stress Management.

Becoming more active and improving your eating habits are the two main ways to reach a healthy weight.

First, change your thinking

If you need to make some lifestyle changes to get to a healthy weight, you'll have more success if you first change the way you think about certain things:

• Don't compare yourself to others. Healthy bodies come in all shapes and sizes. Our culture focuses much too much on thinness, and thinness is just not realistic or natural for most of us. Yet we feel bad when we can't achieve such an unrealistic body size. Body size isn't as important as being healthy.
• Pay attention to how hungry or how full you feel. When you eat, pay attention to why you're eating and how much you're eating.
• Forget about dieting. Dieting almost never works over the long term.
• Decide that you're going to improve your health instead of deciding to go on a diet. For example, you may want to:
  • Become more fit.
  • Lower your blood pressure.
  • Lower your blood sugar (if you have diabetes or prediabetes).
  • Lower your cholesterol.
  • Raise your HDL (good cholesterol).

For more on how positive thinking can help you, see the topic Positive Thinking With Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy or see:

Weight management: Using positive thinking.

Positive thinking: Stopping unwanted thoughts.

One Woman's Story: "I finally realized it wasn't a time-limited thing. It wasn't like, 'Well, I'm going to be really good and stay on this food plan now until I get the weight off.' It was more a realization that, 'You know, at 62, if I want to weigh 130 to 135 pounds, then I have to do these things.' I can't stop doing them just because I lose the weight. So it became much more of a lifestyle change than a temporary diet. The idea that somehow I could go back to my old ways was just not there anymore."—Maggie Read more about how Maggie changed her life and lost 50 pounds.

How do you change your lifestyle?

Making any kind of change in the way you live your daily life is like being on a path. The path leads to success. Here are the first steps on that path:

1. Have your own reason for making a change. If you do it because someone else wants you to, you're less likely to have success.
2. Set goals. Include long-term goals as well as short-term goals that you can measure easily.
3. Measure improvements to your health. For example, keep track of your blood pressure, cholesterol, or blood sugar. Or see how you can shorten the time it takes to walk a mile.
4. Think about what might get in your way, and prepare for slip-ups.
5. Get support from your family, your doctor, your friends—and from yourself.

1. Have your own reasons for making a change

Your reason for wanting to make a lifestyle change is really important. Don't do it just because your spouse or boyfriend or parent wants you to. What makes you want to get to or stay at a healthy weight? Do you:

• Have a specific health concern (your heart, high blood pressure or high cholesterol, diabetes, depression, your bones and muscles, or something else)?
• Want to feel better, have more energy, and enjoy life?
• Want to see a thinner you when you look in the mirror?
• Have another reason for wanting to do this?

It's not easy to make changes. But taking the time to really think about what will motivate or inspire you will help you reach your goals.

One Woman's Story: "Nothing anybody else said to me or suggested to me had any impact, until I decided for myself that I needed to do something about my weight, and that it was worth it."—Maggie Read more about how Maggie changed her life and lost 50 pounds.

2. Set goals you can reach

Ask yourself if you feel ready to begin taking steps toward big goals. If you're not ready yet, try to pick a date when you will start making small changes. Any healthy change—no matter how small—is a good start.

When you are clear about your reasons for wanting to make a change, it's time to set your goals:

• Long-term goals:These are large goals that you want to reach in 6 to 12 months. Let's say that you want to meet the recommendation of doing moderate activity, like brisk walking, for at least 2½ hours a week.² One way to do this is to be active 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week.
• Short-term goals: But you may not be ready for 30 minutes a day just yet. What are the short-term goals that will help you get there? In this case, your first small goal might be to walk for just 10 minutes every other day. After a week, you can set a new goal by adding a few minutes to your walk or adding another day to your schedule.
• Updated goals: It will help you stay motivated if you track your progress and update your goals as you move forward.

Tips for setting goals Focus on small goals. This will help you reach larger goals over time. With smaller goals, you'll have success more often, which will help you stay with it. Write down your goals. This will help you remember, and you'll have a clearer idea of what you want to achieve. Use a personal action plan (What is a PDF document?) to record your goals. Hang up your plan where you will see it often as a reminder of what you're trying to do. Make your goals specific. Specific goals help you measure your progress. For example, setting a goal to walk 30 minutes a day is better than a general goal to "get more exercise." Focus on one goal at a time. By doing this, you're less likely to feel overwhelmed and then give up. As soon as you reach a goal, set a new one.

3. Measure how your health has improved

Before you make lifestyle changes, ask your doctor to check your cholesterol levels, blood pressure, and blood sugar.

Research shows that you can improve your health by losing as little as 5% to 10% of your weight.¹ Here's what that means:

• 5% of 150 lb (68 kg) is 7.5 lb (3 kg), and 10% is 15 lb (7 kg).
• 5% of 200 lb (91 kg) is 10 lb (4.5 kg), and 10% is 20 lb (9 kg).
• 5% of 250 lb (113 kg) is 12.5 lb (6 kg), and 10% is 25 lb (11 kg).

Keeping track of your weight Weigh yourself no more than once a week, unless your doctor tells to you to do so more often because of a health problem. Try to weigh yourself on the same scale, at the same time of day, in about the same amount of clothing. Remember that many things can affect your weight. It's normal for your weight to go up and down by a few pounds from one day to the next. Try to look at the general trend of your weight, rather than the day-to-day changes. Aim to lose no more than 1 to 2 pounds a week. Weight loss of more than that often means that you are not getting enough nutrients to be healthy. And some of the weight you lose may be from lean body tissue (muscle and organ tissue) or water loss, not fat.

Have your cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood sugar checked again after you have lost 5% to 10% of your weight or in 3 to 6 months. You can also check your blood pressure and blood sugar at home.

• Blood sugar levels can tell you whether your lifestyle changes or weight loss are helping to control your diabetes.
• Cholesterol and triglyceride levels can tell you whether your lifestyle changes or weight loss are lowering your risk for heart disease.
• Blood pressure can tell you whether your lifestyle changes or weight loss are lowering your risk for heart disease and stroke.

Another way to measure improvements is to look for changes in your fitness level. For example, are you able to walk longer and on more days than when you started? Can you climb a flight of stairs without getting as tired or out of breath? Do you have better strength and muscle tone? Do you have more energy?

4. Prepare for slip-ups

One Woman's Story: "Beating yourself up because you did something you wish you hadn't done is very negative. It doesn't help anything. ... What I've learned to do is reframe it. What did I learn from that? How did it happen? What was I feeling at the time it happened? What can I do differently so it doesn't happen again?"—Maggie Read more about how Maggie changed her life and lost 50 pounds.

It's perfectly normal to try to change a habit, go along fine for a while, and then have a setback. Lots of people try and try again before they reach their goals.

What are the things that might cause a setback for you? If you have tried to make lifestyle changes before, think about what helped you and what got in your way.

By thinking about these barriers now, you can plan ahead for how to deal with them if they happen.

Here's one person's list of barriers to taking a brisk 30-minute walk every day, along with some possible solutions:

Barriers	Solutions
I might be too busy.	My backup plan will be to break my usual 30-minute walk into two 15-minute walks or three 10-minute walks.
I might get bored.	I'll listen to music or a podcast while I walk. I'll get my neighbor to walk with me.
It might rain.	My backup plan will be to use an exercise DVD or a treadmill in front of my TV when the weather's bad.

Use a personal action plan (What is a PDF document?) to write down your barriers and backup plans.

5. Get support

The more support you have for making a lifestyle change, the easier it is to make that change.

Tips for getting support Get a partner.It's motivating to know that someone is going through the same thing you are and maybe is counting on you to help him or her succeed. That person can also remind you how far you've come. Get friends and family involved.They can exercise with you or encourage you by saying how they admire you. Family members can join you in your healthy eating efforts. Friends can tell you how good you look because you're exercising. Don't be afraid to tell family and friends that their encouragement makes a big difference to you. Healthy eating: Getting support when changing your eating habits Join a class or workout group.People in these groups often have some of the same barriers you have. They can give you support when you don't feel like staying with your plan. They can boost your morale when you need a lift. Give yourself positive reinforcement. When you feel like giving up, don't waste energy feeling bad about yourself. Remember your reason for wanting to change, think about the progress you've made, and give yourself a pep talk and a pat on the back.

One Woman's Story: "One of the (motivators) for me was all the praise and comments people have made to me. My students will comment, 'Gee, you really eat healthy.' ... Other people will say, 'How did you do that, Maggie?' "—Maggie Read more about how Maggie changed her life and lost 50 pounds.

You can use this personal action plan (What is a PDF document?) to organize your support system.

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Author:	Caroline Rea, RN, BS, MS Cynthia Tank	Last Updated: March 6, 2008
Medical Review:	Adam Husney, MD - Family Medicine Ruth Schneider, MPH, RD - Diet and Nutrition Rhonda O'Brien, MS, RD, CDE - Diabetes Educator
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