Congratulations on your new healthier weight, and welcome to your LighterLife Management plan.

Everyone is always in one of three states with their weight – losing, gaining or maintaining. You are already a skilled weight gainer and a skilled weight loser, but the toughest skill to develop and sustain is maintaining the weight loss and being a skilled weight manager.

You’re feeling great at this point and determined to keep the weight off, but you need more than just determination. Without a management plan such as ours, statistics show that most people who lose weight put most of it back on. The key to keeping your weight off is what comes after weight loss – and that’s LighterLife Management.

Our weight-management plans have been helping people for decades. That’s why we know LighterLife Management is the best way to guide you through the crucial early weeks and enable you to develop long-term tactics to help you remain at a healthier weight.

Reintroducing a full range of food

On TotalFast you’ve had the benefit of Foodpacks and ketosis, getting full nutrition and suppressing your physical hunger – putting valuable distance between you and your old, unhelpful behaviours.

Now you’re embarking on reintroducing a full range of food – the very substance you previously used in an unhelpful way – it’s vital to establish healthy living habits.

Going back to how you used to eat isn’t going to work – after all, if you do what you always did, you’ll get what you always had. You need a different way of eating than you had before to maintain your new, smaller body, just as a smaller car uses less fuel than a larger vehicle.

What you get with LighterLife Management

• Carefully designed food and thinking plans to secure your weight loss, improve your relationship with food and guide you through to your lighter, healthier life.
• The opportunity to monitor your physical and emotional responses to different foods.
• Help with creating and developing new tactics for dealing with your potential trigger foods (the ones that seem to shout “eat me, eat me”).
• Great support while you learn to make those essential, long-term lifestyle changes.

At a Glance…

Weeks 1-3 You’re bringing back “baseline” foods. These will enable you to work with your body rather than battling it, to help you manage cravings.

Weeks 4-6 You’r experimenting with “trigger” foods that can be problematic, often those high in carbs, sugars and fats.

Week 7+ You can now choose any types of food, while continuing to develop the skills you’ve been acquiring during weight loss. Regular weigh-ins will help you fine-tune your plan to keep you on track.

What you have each week:

 5 days a week- Your nutrition comes from a mix of Foodpacks and ingredients from your weekly Management food list. Our carefully structured weekly plan minimises unnecessary Calories and helps you make the move from TotalFast weight loss to effective weight management.

2 days a week- Do Management FlexiFasting, replacing all food with four Foodpacks a day.

Every day- Keep well hydrated (water, diet drinks, tea and coffee with milk) and add any LighterLife extras, as you’ve been doing on TotalFast. (Purchase LighterLife Extras here)

*It’s your choice which two days you FlexiFast and which five days you combine your Foodpacks with Management foods. Flex it to suit your lifestyle.

Mind Yourself

You could spend months listening to someone telling you how to drive a car, but until you actually put on the L plates, sit in the driving seat, start it up and pull away, you’d never learn how to become a skilled driver. Weight management is just the same – you need to learn a new skill, which means you have to practise by doing it over and over again. If you choose to deviate from your plan, use it as a learning experience – drivers check their mirrors and set off again.

As well as your regular LighterLife group sessions, each week with your Management plan you’ll get a few extra ideas to think about at home. These are designed to help you gain insight and self-awareness, so you can identify potential bumps in the road on your weight-management journey and work out the best ways to navigate them.

Find a Mentor to support you through the Management plan here.

Moving on

Keeping fit is great for your health and for keeping off your lost weight, so make it a key part of your LighterLife Management plan. The more active you are the better, and everything you do makes a difference, whether it’s using the stairs or mowing the grass (great for your heart and legs) or carrying bags of shopping (good for building your upper body strength).

The best approach is to do something every day that gets your heart beating a bit faster, like brisk walking. Official advice is to aim for at least 2½ hours a week (or just over an hour a week of more vigorous activity like running, or a combination of the two). Strength exercises like weights and sit-ups a couple of times a week give your muscles a toning workout and strengthen your bones, too.