How to Be Sure You're Not Gaining Weight

Whether you have just lost weight as a result of successful dieting or whether you simply want to maintain your current weight, it may be important to you to make sure you are not gaining any weight. By developing a basic understanding of caloric intake, adopting consistent eating and exercise habits and monitoring your weight, you can maintain your current weight.

Things You'll Need

• scale

Show More

Instructions

• 1

  Understand what causes weight gain. People gain weight when they consume more calories than they burn. Different people burn calories at different rates. The bottom line is that if you want to maintain your weight, you must consume the same amount of calories that you burn each day. You can use a calorie calculator to find out approximately how many calories you burn during the course of a day.

• 2

  Make sure that your caloric intake does not exceed the amount of calories you burn each day. This can be accomplished in a number of ways. You can count the calories contained in the foods you eat in order to ensure that you do not exceed the amount that you expend in a regular day. However, counting calories can be time consuming and difficult for some people to do, especially when dining in restaurants. Once you have gained a general idea about how many calories are in certain foods, you can work to develop consistent eating habits, eating relatively the same amount of food each day. By consuming a consistent number of calories daily, you can ensure the calories you expend are equal to the number you consume.

• 3

  Exercise is also important in maintaining your weight. If you are consuming more calories than you would normally expend over the course of a day, doing some extra exercise can help you burn those extra calories. Different activities burn different numbers of calories, depending on how intense the activities are. Exercise is great for the body, so you should try to do some physical activity each day, regardless of how many calories you are eating.

• 4

  Monitor your weight. You don't have to get on the scale every day, but periodic checks to make sure you are not gaining weight are important in maintaining your weight. Remember, a person's weight fluctuates by a few pounds over the course of a day. You should not conclude that you are gaining weight if the scale indicated you gained a pound or two from one day to the next. If your weight remains within a few pounds every time you check it, you are successfully maintaining your weight. However, if you notice your weight steadily rising, that is an indicator that you need to adjust your caloric intake or increase your physical activity.