Maintain Weight Forever

By Zada Green

Maintain weight loss! Maintain weight gain! Maintain weight forever! The popular Maintain Weight Forever website expands into a handy book. Must-see information includes stopping regains, choosing a goal weight, and shrinking saggy skin. Featuring exclusive bonus content, there's something for everyone who wants to maintain for ever, not just for now.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amaria & Sariel
• Release date: Jul 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781501430824

Zada Green

When Zada Green was born, the world didn't stand still. It continued on as normal. Only her parents and older sister really cared, but when she cried too much, even they got a bit fed up. Fast forward only twenty plus years, Zada decided to self-publish. This is her work, one of many to come. Shakespeare rolls in his grave knowing he could never write something so amazing. Alas, he couldn't. Ha ha, hater! Anyway, Zada writes non-fiction and humorous works because she likes to have fun and help others (only nice people) and...Wait. Why am I talking about myself in the third person?

Book preview

Introduction - Maintain Weight Forever

Dear Maintainer,

Greetings from your trusted friend, the Diet Industry!

You finally made it through the dreaded last 15! I'm sure meeting your goal weight was one of the happiest moments in your life...What a pity it will be short-lived. I hope.

As you know, I make a living from weight loss and weight gain. All those fad diets, fat loss pills, fitness e-books, body fat/weight/food scales, and, my personal favourite, weight loss surgery, make me billions each year. The boost in January and the summer makes up for the slower periods, but never fear, business is always booming!

So what's the problem? You. Let me explain...

Now you're a maintainer, you won't be spending any more money on all the weight loss and weight gain products. This means I'll get poorer and poorer until everyone's gone over to the dark side (a healthy lifestyle). Terrible...We can't let that happen!

So what's the solution? Leave this book now and regain the weight. Simple.

I know, I know! You've worked so hard to reach your goal weight, but don't you worry! Regain will be quick and easy. You'll be back in those fat pants before you know it. Then you can go back to obsessive eating, hours of boring exercise, life-threatening diet pills, and expensive weight loss surgery that might kill you. I can go back to sipping bubbly champagne with my happy Bank Manager on a Caribbean cruise - thanks for funding our trip.

Remember, maintainer, keep losing and regaining forever!

Kind regards,

Diet Industry

Seriously, though. The diet industry doesn't want you to maintain. That's why it's so important that you maintain forever, not just for the season or year or whatever else you used as incentive to get fit. Fall off the wagon and you'll slip right back into the Industry's arms.

Maintain Weight Forever isn't exclusively for weight maintainers or people close to their goal weight. This book suits every step of your fitness journey, so you always know what it takes to maintain a healthy weight forever. Many of the tips, reviews, articles, etc I'll share with you apply to weight loss and weight gain too, so invite others at all stages of their healthy lifestyle journey.

I wrote this book because I'm very worried about the lack of support for weight loss maintainers. The diet industry doesn't want maintainers because we don't make them much money - successful maintainers don't do fad diets, buy gimmicky exercise equipment, rely on diet pills, or risk weight loss surgery - so the industry has to keep everyone fat, thin, or slim and unhappy to survive and make billions in profit.

Join me as we prove the diet industry wrong by maintaining our weight loss or weight gain. Despite the depressing 95% will regain figure floating around, each of us can decide to be within the 5% who defy the odds. The more the merrier, so let's make that 5% grow until we're the majority! Weight loss and weight gain are the end of one journey, but weight maintenance is the beginning of another. A journey that lasts a lifetime. A journey that goes on forever.

Zada Green's Journey - Talk the Talk, Walk the Walk

I thought it was baby fat or big bones, not obesity...

I was overweight since childhood, but my size rarely held me back. I enjoyed swimming, the beach, and other things slim people do. I didn't hide away. Being fat wasn't a problem - it was normal to me. However, my experience of buying clothes was far from normal. Most times I would leave the changing room in tears because yet another outfit didn't fit. I've never followed the latest trends, but it would've been nice to wear cute clothes like my peers. Still, I never thought of losing weight and getting fit until...

One afternoon in class, I overheard a boy call me fat. In the past I would've ignored him, but this time something clicked. After years of denial, I finally admitted to myself that I was overweight. It wasn't baby fat. I wasn't chubby or big boned. In fact, weight loss revealed that I'm very close to a small frame. In acceptance of my unhealthy weight, my 17-year-old-self was ready to take action!

That evening, I hopped onto my mum's elliptical and could only exercise for two minutes straight. I was very embarrassed by my unfitness, but remained positive. Things could only get better.

I was right. Within four weeks I was exercising for thirty minutes three times a week, and hungry for more. My sister bought some Billy Blanks DVDs and my workout collection quickly grew. I couldn't afford gym membership, so my exercise tapes were lifesavers!

Support arrived when I joined online fitness communities. I've deserted them twice, and ended up regaining to obesity both times. A strong support system helps me stay on track when I'm close to giving up. Inspired by those communities, I started three health and fitness websites: Maintain Weight Forever, Cutting Fitness, home of the popular 5 Reasons Why Sparkpeople Sucks! entry, and Healthy Black Queens.

Over the years, I slowly reduced my weight from 200 to 125 pounds, but I'm not done yet. I'm close to maintenance, so hopefully another 15 pounds should tone everything up. Then I'll focus on building muscle mass to fill any loose skin.

I thought that being fat didn't hold me back. I was wrong. Getting, and staying, fit pushes your body and mind in ways you'd never expect. Achieving fitness goals pushes you to succeed in other areas of your life. Being slimmer is great, but being a more positive, determined, strong woman is even better!

Mental Maintenance - Maintain Inside and Out

What made you unfit? Food, alcohol, family, friends, co-workers, illness, etc. Possibly, but most likely it was your emotional state. Poor mental health translates to poor physical health. For example, say you're always depressed. Sadness, stress, and depression are obviously signs of poor mental health. How do you cope? You turn to drugs, food, anything to divert attention away from what's causing your sadness. Then your mental state starts to affect your physical one because bad habits cause regain. Flabby, unfit, and unhappy, your physical state now matches the mental one.

So what am I getting at?

If you don't address the mental side of weight maintenance, you won't maintain for long. Addressing your demons helped you overcome being too heavy or too light, so there's no reason why you can't handle a maintenance mindset.

The following are several maintenance thoughts you should consider. If not, you seriously risk a nasty surprise further down the line.

What Counts As Weight Maintenance?

According to the National Weight Control Registry, losing at least 30lbs and keeping it off is maintenance. I've seen others say maintenance is keeping off at least 10% of the weight lost. Personally, I think maintenance involves staying close to your goal weight i.e. between 10lbs over or under.

For the sake of this book, weight maintenance means a weight you can maintain forever. It could be 5lbs from your goal weight or 50lbs. As long as you're healthy and happy, you're a maintainer.

So why put this in the mental maintenance section? Because of other people.

You will be content at the weight you choose to maintain, but there will always be some fussy cow who knows best. They'll say you're too skinny or too fat. They'll say you