How Is Maintaining Your Weight Different Than Losing Weight?

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

Are Energy Drinks Really That Bad?

It all started with three or four cans of Mountain Dew a day. That was in high school. Then, in college, it was 5-Hour Energy. Two shots a day, to be exact. Later, it was a 20-ounce can of Monster each morning. At one point, Aaron Templin, now 36, had to stop – at least temporarily.

“I don’t even know how to describe it. It was too much energy – way too much energy,” says the customer service worker in Gaithersburg, Maryland, who now mostly drinks coffee and water. “It was like an out-of-body experience. It was pretty crazy.”

Sales of energy drinks and shots such as Red Bull, Monster and 5-Hour Energy are higher than ever – growing 60 percent between 2008 and 2012 to a market worth more than $12.5 billion, according to a report from the market research company Packaged Facts. The report predicted sales will eclipse $21 billion by 2017.

How to Stay on a Diet to Lose or Maintain Weight

A diet is only as good as your ability to stick to it. Research has found that most plans will help you lose weight, regardless of type – low-fat or low-carb, for example. What counts is whether you can stay on it long term. And with restaurant meals, dinners with friends and hot fudge sundaes to tempt you, adherence is an understandable challenge. Here are nine tricks for making your diet stick:

1. Gather the troops. You need support, be it from a friend, a group like Overeaters Anonymous or even an online community. Research suggests those who try to diet alone are most likely to fall off the wagon. That's why some plans have a formal support component – Weight Watchers connects dieters via weekly meetings, while Jenny Craig members are assigned counselors for advice and encouragement. If you're not comfortable talking about your weight face-to-face, log online. By signing up for the free program PeerTrainer, for example, dieters can interact and track each others' weight-loss progress, pose questions and swap diet and exercise tips. "It's important to have people who will pick you up when times are tough and cheer you on when you have successes," says registered dietitian Dawn Jackson Blatner, author of "The Flexitarian Diet." Plus, she adds: "Healthy habits are contagious."

9 Secrets of Successful Weight Maintenance

1. They do it for themselves first.

"Your desire to maintain must be driven by something that's deeper and consistent with your own internal values," says Scott Kahan, MD, director of the National Center for Weight and Wellness.

Take some time to think about what's really important to you and how your weight ties into it. For example, you want to be there to see your grandkids grow up, or to take that biking vacation you've always wanted to do.

2. They prize exercise.

You could lose weight based on your diet alone. But to maintain weight loss, physical activity is an absolute must, says James O. Hill, PhD, co-founder of the National Weight Control Registry, a national database of more than 10,000 people who have lost an average of 66 pounds and kept it off an average of 5.5 years.

Healthy Weight Loss and Dieting Tips

The key to successful, healthy weight loss

Your weight is a balancing act, but the equation is simple: If you eat more calories than you burn, you gain weight. And if you eat fewer calories than you burn, you lose weight.

Since 3,500 calories equals about one pound of fat, if you cut 500 calories from your typical diet each day, you'll lose approximately one pound a week (500 calories x 7 days = 3,500 calories). Simple, right? Then why is weight loss so hard?