5 steps to sustainable weight loss

Excess weight and obesity can increase your risk of heart and circulatory conditions, but losing weight can be difficult.

While some extreme weight loss plans or restrictive diets promise quick results, these can be hard to stick to.

Instead, making small but achievable changes to your lifestyle can help you lose weight in a healthier and more sustainable way.

Here are 5 ways to make your weight loss efforts a lasting success.

1. Understand what causes obesity

Obesity is not caused by ‘a lack of willpower’. Many factors around food and activity influence weight gain.

A good first step is to think about why you might have put on weight. Is it a recent change or part of a long-term pattern?

Did you start doing something differently – eating out more, being less active or eating different foods – around the time you began putting on weight?

For example, being busy at work or with family can make it harder to make healthy food choices, and might lead to you having more ready-made or take-away meals.

These usually contain more saturated fat – which is linked to weight gain – as well as sugar and salt, compared to home-cooked meals, and often have larger portion sizes too.

Another change in lifestyle could be that, like many people, you’re working from home more now, and have less opportunity to exercise on the way to work.

Having excess weight or obesity can also make it harder to exercise.

The NHS recommends 150 minutes of moderate intensity activity, like cycling or brisk walking, a week.

But research shows that people living with obesity are less likely to exercise for this amount of time each week, than people who are not obese.

• Get 18 tips for healthy meals in a hurry.

2. Work out your healthy weight

Set yourself a weight loss target by working out your body mass index (BMI), which compares your weight to your height to see if you’re healthy, overweight or you have obesity.

You can use our BMI calculator to work out your BMI, and how much weight you need to lose for a healthy weight.

If you weigh more than is healthy for your height, you do not have to take extreme measures to lose weight quickly.

Instead, break your weight loss down into small goals and focus on each step at a time.

If you have a lot of excess weight, start by aiming to lose 10 per cent of your body weight.

This will feel more achievable, but will still have big health benefits even if your BMI is still classed as overweight afterwards.

And try not to be disheartened if it’s going to take a long time to get to your ideal weight. It probably took a long time for you to gain the weight too.

• Find out the best way to measure body fat.

3. Make changes that work for your lifestyle

To see a long-term impact on your weight, you need to make changes for good, so it's important that your weight loss plan is something you can stick to.

Making small changes to your lifestyle can feel insignificant, but they gradually add up over time.

You might find it helpful not to think about a ‘diet’, but rather a lifestyle approach you can keep to over a long time.

Some people find eating less fat or carbohydrates works, some count calories, while others lower their calorie intake on certain days.

A combination of diet changes and getting more active has been shown to be more effective than just changing what you eat, so think about ways to include exercise into your routine too.

This might be walking or cycling instead of driving, a home exercise workout, or meeting a friend for a walk or a run.

If the NHS’s recommended 150 minutes of moderate intensity activity a week seems like a lot to begin with, try breaking this down into 10-minute chunks.

• Discover 5 ways to sneak exercise into your day.

4. Eat a balanced diet

To lose weight, the energy you eat (calories) needs to be less than the energy you use.

Some diets or weight loss plans suggest cutting out entire food groups to achieve this, but this means you miss out on essential nutrients.

To remain healthy, your diet still needs to be balanced. So instead of cutting foods out, focus on eating more foods like fruit and vegetables, beans, wholegrains and oily fish.

These are all part of the Mediterranean diet, which has been proven to help with weight loss and improve heart health.

Some foods that are higher in calories are also good for you. For example, foods like oily fish, unsalted nuts and avocado are high in fat, but they contain healthy unsaturated fats that help maintain healthy cholesterol levels.

If you’re trying to lose weight, eat these foods less often or limit your portion size.

Reduced-calorie, low-calorie or light versions of your favourite foods can also be helpful.

But remember to check food labels, as low-calorie does not always mean they are low in salt and sugar. 

• Read about 13 small changes that add up to a healthy diet 

5. Get support from others

If you live with someone else, asking them to support you, or even lose weight with you, can help to reduce the temptation of unhealthy foods at home.

Group support also works well for some people.

There's some evidence that joining a weight loss group leads to more successful weight loss than doing it alone.

You can ask to your GP or practice nurse if there are local groups you can join or be referred to.

They may be able to offer you other support with your weight loss journey too, such as exercise on prescription, where you are referred for sessions with a qualified trainer.

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