Gained a Few Pounds? How to Get Back to Your Happy Weight

Everyone does it—heavy people, skinny people, the recently slim and trim. Everyone puts on a few pounds every once in a while. So if you’ve gained a few pounds, you’re not alone.

The key to making sure that a few pounds doesn’t send the number on the scale right back to where it started, is to maintain your vigilance—but also stay chill about it. Two, three, five pounds—it’s not a catastrophe. Don’t use it as an excuse to go back to your old ways of eating, as people with an “all-or-nothing” mentality tend to do. And while you may be upset with yourself, it’s no excuse for emotional eating either.

The solution to putting on a couple of pounds isn’t to drown your sorrows in a hot fudge sundae—jump back into your Nutrisystem program and get back on track with your health and wellness.

There are smarter ways to lose the weight the second time around, like these helpful tips from Nutrisystem:

1. Move a little more.

Get back on track… literally. “When you indulge one day, just think of it as extra calories you’ll need to burn off the next day. So, increase your exercise that week,” suggests Nutrisystem Weight Loss Coach Jaclyn Heister.

Studies have even shown that moderately vigorous activity can temporarily reduce appetite by increasing satiety hormones—the ones that tell you you’re not hungry—and suppressing the hormone ghrelin, an appetite stimulator.

The most successful losers in the National Weight Control Register (people who have lost 30 pounds or more and kept it off for a year), regularly exercise off more than 2500 calories a week.

2. Don’t think of it as “going back on my diet.”

Yes, jump back on your Nutrisystem meal plan. But it’s not a “diet,” in that it’s something you go on for a little while and then jump off.

Science has found that dieting, in this sense of the word, often leads to weight gain for many reasons—including making you preoccupied with food and restricting what you eat until it triggers binges. Instead, think of the healthy eating habits you learned as you lost as “the way I eat now.”

“Choose high quality, lean proteins and healthy fats, and high fiber complex carbs,” suggests Heister. They’ll help keep the “hungries” at bay so it’s easier for you to lose the weight.

3. Keep track of your weight and your foods.

“Remember, staying accountable is helpful,” says Heister. “Even when you’re off the Nutrisystem plan, continue to track your foods on NuMi. Maintaining your weight is about moderation.”

People on the National Weight Control Registry are most successful at paring off the weight they’ve regained by making sure they catch themselves before they have a lot to lose.

“Preventing small regains from turning into larger relapses appears critical to recovery among successful weight losers,” wrote researchers Rena Wing and Suzanne Phelan in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Climb on the scale regularly. Gaining a pound or two is normal, but if you start inching up to five or more, go back to your original game plan.

4. Let your health motivate you.

Make a commitment to avoid “yo-yo dieting.” Researchers at the Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island, at an annual meeting of the American Heart Association last year, explained that losing and regaining weight over and over can be dangerous to your heart, even if you’re not overweight.

They found that even normal weight women who gain and lose had a 66 percent increased risk for dying of coronary heart disease. Their research also suggested that this cycle is associated with sudden cardiac death.

The American Heart Association warns people to keep an eye on their cholesterol, blood pressure, amount of exercise and food sources, in addition to keeping a consistent, healthy weight.

5. Don’t worry.

As long as you’re mindful, vigilant and practicing moderation, your diet slip-up won’t turn into a lost battle. “Losing your weight did not happen overnight, and you will not put it all back on overnight!” says Heister.

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