Reached your goal weight? What to do next? New diet or dame routine? Read what the experts say below:

The question: After you’ve slimmed down, should you use a different strategy for maintaining weight loss? Or will the same steps that help you drop pounds in the first place still work?

The expert: James O. Hill, Ph.D., executive director of the Anschutz Health and Wellness Center at the University of Colorado and author of State of Slim

The answer: Actually, your game plan for losing weight should be totally different from your game plan for keeping it off. When you’re in weight-loss mode, it’s a temporary situation primarily driven by food restriction (which is why it’s so much easier to lose weight through diet than exercise). “You can do things for three months that you can’t do forever,” says Hill.

When it comes to maintaining your weight, though, research indicates that exercise is the single biggest factor in predicting who’s going to prevent the weight from creeping back on, says Hill. “Keeping weight off is about delveoping new habits and rituals and routines,” he says. “It becomes much more important to look at long-term behavior change for maintenance.”

To kickstart your own lasting healthy habits, check out the 10 eating habits of perpetually fit people and read up on how to stick to your workout for good

Source: ABC NEWS – Health