How to Keep Weight Off After Dieting

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Today’s Health Upgrade

Deep Dive
Number You Won’t Forget: 100 Calories

Why the Weight Comes Back (And What To Do About It)

Yesterday, we discussed metabolic damage, which led to a lot of questions. So we figured we’d go a little deeper.

Losing weight and keeping it off are two different challenges. During weight loss, progress gives you feedback. The scale moves, your clothes fit differently, and you usually have a clear plan for what to eat.

Maintenance removes much of that structure, while your body could still push you to regain it.

Your metabolism slows as you lose weight, but about half of that slowdown seems to fade once your weight stabilizes. The bigger problem is appetite.

One analysis estimated that appetite increases by about 100 calories per day for every 2.2 pounds lost. That effect was more than three times larger than the estimated metabolic slowdown.

The number came from a mathematical model involving people with type 2 diabetes, and the lead author worked for the company that made the drug being studied, so it shouldn’t be treated as an exact rule. 

However, that research isn't alone and appears to reflect what happens with weight loss. In one study, several hormones involved in hunger and fullness remained altered, and people still reported feeling hungrier, a full year after weight loss.

And it’s not just about battling hunger. You generally need to eat less than before losing weight because your smaller body burns fewer calories.

A smaller body requires fewer calories than a larger one. That alone doesn’t prove metabolic damage. There is simply less body to move and maintain. A big truck generally burns more fuel than a small car. Similar concept.

Someone who returns to the portions that maintained their previous weight will probably start gaining if their activity stays the same, even if their metabolism is functioning normally.

And there’s one more variable. When you hit your goal, maintenance often means, “no visibility.” 

Food gets tracked less often. Meals become less planned. Regular weigh-ins disappear. None of these changes feels dramatic on its own, but the lack of accountability leads you to underestimate how much you’re eating week over week and month over month, and the changes you made slip away.

Once you understand why regain can happen, it can become easier to plan against it. The best time to prepare for maintenance is before the weight-loss phase ends.

In randomized trials, programs that continued to support both eating and activity reduced regain by about 3.5 pounds after one year. Given that weight gain tends to be a slow, gradual process, ongoing structure helps.

Start by planning for more hunger. Meals built around protein, high-fiber foods, and enough total food volume are easier to maintain than a plan that relies on willpower between small meals.

Keep weighing yourself on some cadence, but decide in advance what requires action. 

If your weight stays three to five pounds above your target for two weeks, return to tighter portions, more consistent meals, or closer tracking until it comes back down. 

In one maintenance trial, people who weighed themselves daily and had a plan for when the number crept up regained less, but weighing alone wasn’t enough. Research on weight loss shows the same pattern: self-weighing works best as part of a larger plan, not as the whole strategy.

Activity matters, too. People who have maintained substantial weight loss for a year or more (many for far longer) commonly report about an hour of daily activity, frequent weigh-ins, and eating breakfast most days. That research is observational, so it can’t prove every habit caused their success. It does show what successful maintenance often looks like: the behaviors become less intense, but they don’t vanish.

Maintenance doesn’t require the intensity of dieting, but it does require keeping some of the structure that got you there. That’s why it’s important to build your weight loss around a sustainable process.

If you need help, the Nutrition Tracker in the Pump Club app is there for you.  No calorie counting. We do the thinking for you. Try it free for 7 days, and earn money back for each workout program you complete (up to $100 per year).

Together With Pique
Why Tea Is A Heart-Healthy Drink 

Tea is easy to overlook because it feels too ordinary to count as a health habit. That’s also what makes it useful. 

The behaviors that support long-term health are often the ones you can repeat without reorganizing your life. Green tea appears to improve several markers tied to heart health, with the largest benefits among people who started with higher cholesterol.

Researchers reviewed 55 randomized controlled trials on concentrated green tea. Tea lowered total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, fasting blood sugar, and HbA1c. It also slightly reduced diastolic blood pressure.

Green tea won’t overhaul your cardiovascular health. But heart health is shaped by habits repeated over years, and even a small improvement can help when the habit is simple enough to maintain.

Researchers think catechins, the signature compounds in green tea, may alter how the body absorbs and processes cholesterol. That could help explain why the clearest benefits appeared in people whose cholesterol had more room to improve.

The one problem? In the largest trial in the analysis, high-dose extract capsules were linked to liver-enzyme problems in some women. 

But you don’t need a capsule to get the benefits. A cup of brewed tea delivers the same family of compounds in its natural, gentler form, and it’s the version people have safely enjoyed for centuries.

If you want a daily ritual that helps offset life's inevitable stress, tea is one of the easiest wins we’ve found.

That's why we recommend Pique tea, including their Sun Goddess Matcha. 

Their Cold Brew Crystallization process cold-brews organic tea leaves for up to 8 hours, then removes the water through low-temperature dehydration, preserving up to 12x the catechins and antioxidants compared to conventional tea. That way, you get a more concentrated dose, like what’s used in the research, but in a form you can actually enjoy every morning.

No brewing. No steeping. No guessing about potency. You pour the crystals into hot or cold water, stir, and you're done. Every batch is triple-screened for pesticides, heavy metals, and toxic mold, sourced from organic, family-run farms

As an APC reader, you get 20% off for life and a free starter kit on purchases over $100. And Pique also offers a 90-day money-back guarantee, so you have time to try it for yourself and see how it fits into your day.

Mindset 
Weekly Wisdom

If you read “Thank you, Mike,” in yesterday’s “Adam’s Corner,” the story isn’t over. 

It gets even better.

Anne Frank wrote the sentence above in her diary in July 1944. She was 15, hiding with her family in a sealed-off annex in Amsterdam, and they would be discovered a few weeks later. If anyone had earned the right to give up on people, it was her. Instead, she wrote about. her faith in them.

You don’t have to be in dire circumstances to apply a similar mindset. 

If you missed it, a reader named Mike emailed asking us to “put Adam’s Corner to bed,” calling it “random nonsense.” 

I shared his note in my last column. I only briefly mentioned my reply. The day his email arrived, I wrote him back, thanked him, and pointed out that the column runs once a week, in the same spot, and is easy to skip.

Yesterday, Mike wrote again, this time to address his original comments and my column. 

Mike was having a bad week and a worse stretch of insomnia when he sent the first email, and he figured he was “writing into the abyss.” He apologized. 

Then he added the best part: “Gives me a lesson in accountability, cheers.”

Apologizing to a stranger takes more nerve than criticizing one. That credit belongs to Mike. I love extreme ownership. 

But there’s another part to this, too. 

I doubt that second email exists if I’d snapped back. A sharp reply gives people a reason to defend their worst moment. Mike got a reply that assumed he could hear a different point of view, and he met it.

That’s what we mean when we call this the positive corner of the internet. Positivity, the way we practice it, includes the hard notes. 

You can create your own positive corner, wherever you go. It means taking criticism seriously and answering it in a way that lifts people up. 

We try to hold that standard in the newsletter and in the app. It works just as well at your kitchen table.

Turn Wisdom Into Action

Thankfully, your tests of belief aren’t in the same context as Anne Frank. It could be a text from your boss. A stranger’s comment under your photo. An email that reads like it was typed with clenched fists.

Small tests are where most of us fold. You read the message once, and the backstory writes itself. This person is bitter. This person meant every word. By the second paragraph, you’re drafting a reply in your head, ready to hit back harder than the initial blow.

That reflex feels like self-protection. And sometimes it might be necessary. But giving in to anger just keeps the cycle going and removes any consideration that could lead to a better outcome. 

Stanford researchers asked people to estimate how many Reddit users post severely toxic comments. The average guess was 43%. 

However, platform data put the real number closer to 3%. That small, loud group produces about a third of all comments, so people sense the volume of nastiness correctly. They just pin it on far too many people. 

When participants learned the real numbers, they felt better about their fellow citizens and less convinced the country was in moral decline.

It can be hard to believe sometimes, but when something harsh lands in front of you, the odds favor a decent person on a rough day.

Sometime this week or next, a message will sting. When it does, give yourself some time before you reply.

Use that time to write one sentence that starts with “Maybe they...” 

Maybe they’re exhausted. Maybe they had a bad day. Maybe they’re Mike, wide awake when they should be asleep. 

Then find the part of the message that might be true, even if it’s 10%, and answer that part first.

Some messages deserve the delete key. The 3% are real.

But most, you’ll find, deserve a second read and a reply written for the person you hope they are.

Mike was just having a bad week. Does he need to be accountable and try not to lash out when he's having an off moment? Definitely. 

But Mike also deserves space to be human, make mistakes, and have people around him who hold him accountable and lift him up, not push him down. 

Odds are, the next person who gets under your skin deserves the same grace. 

Reader Question 
Why Do Habits Feel Like Hurdles?

I’m looking for a mental framework or mindset shift to help make being healthy more of a habit, instead of feeling like a hurdle or burden.

Goals require you to want them every single day, while habits work because you eventually stop needing to think about wanting them.

Stop treating health as a finish line and start treating it as a cue: the same small action, attached to the same moment in your day, repeated until it happens without a decision. 

Motivation gets you started. Repetition in a stable setting makes a behavior automatic, and automatic behavior survives a bad week. You don’t need more discipline. You need fewer decisions.

If the changes you want keep falling apart, build momentum by starting with smaller changes you can succeed at, then move on to bigger tasks that will feel easier.

Pick one moment that already happens every day, like pouring your morning coffee, and attach one action small enough that, even if it feels difficult, it still feels silly to skip. Maybe it’s ten squats, drinking a full glass of water, or pacing for 2 minutes. Do it in that spot every day this week. If you miss a day, pick it back up the next morning instead of waiting for Monday.
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And that’s it for this week. Thanks for being a part of the positive corner of the internet. And remember: don’t wait to make a change. Take action on any goal, don’t quit in the hard moments, and the results will come. Have a fantastic weekend!
-Arnold, Adam, and Daniel

The Positive Corner of The Internet
About Arnold’s Pump Club Editorial Standards

We do things a bit differently here, starting with transparency.

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Publisher: Arnold Schwarzenegger​

Editors-in-chief: Adam Bornstein and Daniel Ketchell