For dietary and exercise changes to be sustainable in the long-term, they need to be part of your daily life.

It is important to be able to recognise patterns in your behaviour or cues from your day-to-day lifestyle that can lead you to over-eat or under-exercise. These may include:

• Stress management
• Identifying when you are more likely to over-eat or eat high energy foods
• Paying attention to your appetite and only eating when hungry
• Making sure you are eating appropriate portion sizes
• Keeping your meal patterns regular
• Not skipping meals.

Being able to identify barriers to exercise (e.g. social barriers, time constraints and unrealistic expectations), can assist you in setting realistic goals and finding motivation to assist you in losing weight and sustaining weight in the long-term. Social support is also an important factor in keeping focused and motivated. Weight loss groups can provide a group environment to support long-term weight maintenance.

Long-term sustained changes in weight are most likely when behaviours change long-term. These may include small achievable steps one at a time, for example:

• Reducing portion sizes
• Reducing snacks
• Avoiding soft drinks and juice
• Changing to low-fat dairy foods
• Setting goals (e.g. weight maintenance or a five per cent decrease in weight)
• Incorporating an extra ten minutes of activity into every day (30 minutes daily is the current recommendation)

Further Resources

 Dr Rick’s 10 Top Tips to be a healthy weight (84.59 KB)

Managing stress

Content updated July 31, 2009