Psychological Predictors of Weight Loss Maintenance
Nov 06, 2020You’ve likely heard that perceptions and thoughts drive your behavior (probably at least 1000x from me alone lol)
Here I provide 18 weight loss studies to provide evidence for that. 🤓
Of course other factors like physiology and dieting practices matter a lot as well —
but the purpose of this post is to zero in on the psychological factors that matter most when it comes to maintaining weight loss after dieting.
I’ve mentioned every one of these factors in separate posts, some times multiple times.
But what’s cool here, is that we can see what factors seem to matter most — across 18 different studies.
It might surprise you that setting unrealistic goals isn’t a strong predictor of whether or not you can maintain your weight loss 🤯
Of course, research is based on averages, so I’m not saying these strong predictors are indeed strong predictors for EVERYONE or that something like unrealistic expectations doesn’t matter for YOUR weight loss maintenance.
But, it is pretty cool to have this information to better inform our goal setting and thought processes (us coaches at KJO use research like this to drive our coaching practices) #evidencebased
It’s also important to note that alllll of these factors are related.
For instance:
Poor body image could lead to depression ⇢ which could lead to emotional eating, ⇢ which could cause uncontrolled eating behaviors, ⇢ and result in weight re-gain.
Have you noticed any of these psychological factors showing up in your health and fitness goals?
For better or for worse?
