7 habits to lose weight and keep it off

“What we’re largely taught—in society, in the weight loss field, in diet books—is if you just find the right diet, the right guru, the right pill, then it’ll solve all your problems,” says Dr. Scott Kahan, MPH, director of the National Center for Weight and Wellness in Washington, D.C. “You lose the weight, and you’ll live happily ever after. And that’s pretty much never, ever the case.”

Dr. Lydia Alexander, obesity medicine specialist and president-elect of the Obesity Medicine Association says that when experts approach weight loss and weight management, they don’t use a single-strategy method, but instead approach it with a comprehensive care model based on four pillars: nutritional therapy, physical activity, behavioral modification, and medical interventions.

“It gets us away from the fixed mindset that there’s one way to do this,” says Alexander. “It requires understanding it as not a cosmetic issue, but as a medical condition that’s treatable.”

Here are a few tried-and-true tenets that Kahan and Alexander say can help move you toward a healthier weight.

Track your progress

Self-monitoring is a proven strategy for both weight loss and weight maintenance. You might think keeping records means “counting calories,” but any kind of check-in can work to help you build a new habit.

You can keep a record of your weight over time to get an idea of how things are trending, your steps to see how sedentary you are in a day, or the types of foods you’re eating to get an overall picture of your nutrition, such as how many vegetables you eat in a day, says Kahan.

“Generally tracking behaviors is…