If losing weight is an uphill battle, then the challenge of keeping it off can be likened to navigating a series of rolling hills.

While savoring your success at each summit, you might slip and fall. Eventually, you’ll regain your footing and move onward and upward with a new apex in sight. This analogy may come as a surprise to anyone who’s moving south on the scale. “Many of us think that if we can shed those extra pounds, we’ll live happily ever after,” says Marlene Schwartz, deputy director at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University. “But weight maintenance is no different from managing diabetes or a food allergy. It requires constant effort.”

Fortunately, there are some time-tested strategies to ease the process and prevent those pounds from returning. We asked top researchers in the field, as well as women who have weathered the slippery terrain, about what you can expect, both physically and emotionally, after reaching your goal. Their revelations will help you manage your expectations and stay slim over the long haul.

Diet Tip 1. You’ll get a huge confidence boost
“Losing weight is a big accomplishment,” says Catherine Hastings, a therapist in Pennsylvania. “It can be powerful enough to embolden you to go out and try new things.”

Giselle Hön, who lost 15kg, went from hating sports to completing the Pick n Pay Argus Cycle Tour, “I made it onto the red carpet at the end of the race smiling, crying, and waving my hands in the air.”

Diet Tip 2. Losing weight won’t solve every problem
“We think that if we gain control over one tough thing–say, our unhealthy eating habits–everything else will fall into place,” says Tom Reen, a nutritionist and life coach in Durham, North Carolina. But that’s usually not the case.
He estimates that 85 percent of his clients who struggle with their weight have underlying issues, from career unhappiness to a troubled marriage. Tackling physical challenges is generally easier than resolving emotional ones, like stepping off the corporate fast track or confronting a straying spouse.
Ask yourself why being slim is important to you. Is your objective to be healthier, or are you hoping it will lead to something else– say, a boyfriend, a bigger paycheck, or more attention from your husband?

If better health isn’t your main goal, you may feel disappointed by the outcome–and that can sap your motivation, making it that much harder to stick with the program. “Working with a therapist or life coach can help you cope with your specific challenges,” explains Amy Jamieson, a director of wellness coaching and a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association. By addressing the root of your unhappiness, you’ll likely have an easier time keeping the weight off in the long run.

Diet Tip 3. Not everyone will be happy for you
While many of your friends and acquaintances will support your efforts to slim down, others will feel resentful. Some may even try to sabotage your success.
Substantial weight loss is a drastic change. The tension that arises isn’t as much about feeling envious as it is about the disappearance of shared experiences. It takes time for everyone to adjust.

Whenever Lisa Delaney, the author of Secrets of a Former Fat Girl, went to visit her father, he would grill her a big, juicy steak. But that changed when she dropped 31 kilograms and swore off red meat. “He took it personally, as though I was trying to hurt him,” she says. At first Delaney was angry that he couldn’t respect her wishes, but then she thought of a way to preserve her figure – and their bond. “Now I bring lean cuts of meat when I visit,” she says.

If you have a boyfriend or spouse, try to include him in the transition – sign up for a 5K together or ask for their help preparing meals. And if they seem less than enthusiastic about your transformation, explain why reaching this goal was so important to you – that you now feel more confident and energetic because of it. If food has come between you and a friend, find common ground. Rather than sharing a meal, for example, meet your friends for a movie or a pedicure. For more advice read: Are your friends sabotaging your diet?

Diet Tip 4. You can’t eat like you did before
We all know – and envy – that woman who resides comfortably in her size 10 jeans and seems to eat with reckless abandon. Of course, genes – which help determine how many kilojoules we burn when we’re at rest – partly, explain the difference. But looks can definitely be deceiving, says George Blackburn, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and the author of Break Through Your Set Point.

Studies show that most normal-weight and slim people listen to their bodies, which helps them naturally compensate for the extra kilojoules they consume. “They may eat slowly and take small bites,” he says, “or make up for those kilojoules by burning them off at the gym or eating less later in the day.”

Unfortunately, this type of self-control may elude you after shedding those kilograms – at least at first. Weight loss causes shifts in your appetite-regulating hormones, so satiety signals don’t kick in as soon as they normally would. “It takes six months or more for your hormone levels to adapt to the new number on the scale,” says Blackburn. Until that time, it’s important to calculate your kilojoule needs.

In general, you need to take in 60 kilojoules per kilogram of body weight each day to make the number on the scale stick. For example, if you weigh 77 kilograms, you’ll require 10 674 kilojoules daily; drop down to 69 kilograms and you’ll need just 9 606 kilojoules. A nutritional counselor or dietitian can help you make adjustments to your diet so you take in the right number of kilojoules to maintain your new weight.

Diet Tip 5. Veggies will be your savior
At first glance, they seem the very definition of diet food. “But raw or steamed vegetables stave off hunger pangs while keeping kilojoules down, thanks to a high volume of water and fiber,” says Barbara J. Rolls, a nutrition professor at Penn State and author of The Volumetrics Eating Plan.
In her research, people who had a small, low- kilojoule salad before their entrre ate 7 percent fewer kilojoules during the meal; those who began with a larger low-cal salad took in 12 percent fewer kilojoules overall. Many weight maintainers, however, take a much less scientific approach. They simply make it a habit to fill half their plate with vegetables and pile them on every sandwich, pasta dish, and omelet.

Diet Tip 6. You may need a refresher course
As they say, old habits die hard. So if you always ordered the fried appetizer sampler at your favorite after-work spot or soothed yourself after a stressful day with a bowl of ice cream, you may still feel entitled to treat yourself occasionally. But do it too often and you’ll reinforce those bad habits – and put on a few of the kilograms you’ve dropped.
Unfortunately, many people struggle to recover from even the smallest slipups, including gains of as little as 1 to 2 kilograms, says James O. Hill, a professor at the University of Colorado. That’s why it’s important to “react immediately to lapses,” he says, using the very tools that helped you pare down initially. First, dust off that scale.

When Hill interviewed formerly overweight men and women on the National Weight Control Registry (a roster of more than 6000 participants who, on average, have lost 30 kilograms and kept them off for five and a half years), most reported weighing themselves once a week; more than half do so every day.

“The scale gives them an early warning signal,” says Hill. “When they go above a ’safe’ range– usually up to about 1 kilogram – they restart the diet plan that got them slim in the first place.”Keeping your trusty food journal within reach can also help prevent those tiny gains from adding up, as will renewing your relationship with a personal trainer or nutritional adviser. In a three-year study that tracked 1032 overweight and obese adults, 77 percent of those who received one-on-one counseling weighed less than they did before dieting. Online support yielded impressive results too; 69 percent who were signed up for it managed to maintain their weight loss. According to Jamieson-Petonic, meeting just once a month with a nutritionist, weight-loss counselor, or good friend who has similar goals “will not only keep you accountable, it will also help you adjust your eating and exercise plans to meet your new weight and lifestyle needs.”

Diet Tip 7. Your old workout may no longer work
The men and women on the National Weight Control Registry report exercising for an average of an hour to 75 minutes daily. But that doesn’t mean they use the same machines or run the same route day after day. Varying your workout can stave off boredom, helping you stay on track. Studies have shown that being highly motivated to exercise is associated with long-term success.

Changing things up will also work new muscles and help you burn kilojoules more efficiently. “Your body is an adaptation machine,” explains Gabriel Valencia, a co-founder of Focus Integrated Fitness in New York City. “Once it becomes accustomed to a task, it needs less and less energy to accomplish what initially felt challenging.”

So as time goes on, you’ll have to work out longer to get the same results. Valencia advises taking your cardio routine up a notch with interval training – say, alternating 30 seconds of a high-intensity activity, such as a sprinting on the treadmill, with 60 to 90 seconds of a lower-intensity activity, like walking. You’ll also want to shake up your resistance routine, he says, by adding new moves or more weight, or varying the number of repetitions. Building muscle mass will keep your metabolism stoked even while you’re at rest.
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Diet Tip 8. You may still think you’re a fat person
This distortion is common post-weight loss, says Schwartz. Each of us has a picture in our head of what we look like, and it isn’t updated all that frequently -so just as your 40-year-old brother might still resemble a teenager in your mind’s eye, a thin version of yourself may still read as “fat,” especially if you were overweight for many years or as a child.

How can you begin to see yourself as others see you?

Start by surrounding yourself with people who encourage you to shine. Crowe’s personal trainer constantly praised her progress and gently suggested wearing clothing that showcased her efforts. For Jamieson-Petonic, who has maintained a 45-kilogram weight loss for 17 years, hiring a fashion consultant gave her the body image boost she needed. “She completely revamped my wardrobe, introducing me to pieces that flattered my figure,” she says. “Because I was still seeing myself as a 113-kilogram woman, this was a task I couldn’t have handled alone.”

As others compliment you on your new look, an updated self-image will come into focus, says Schwartz. And that will not only renew your motivation to stay on track, it will also help you embrace the inevitable ups and downs along the way.