1. Understand what causes obesity
Obesity is not caused by ‘a lack of willpower’. Many factors around food and activity influence weight gain.
A good first step is to think about why you might have put on weight. Is it a recent change or part of a long-term pattern?
Did you start doing something differently – eating out more, being less active or eating different foods – around the time you began putting on weight?
For example, being busy at work or with family can make it harder to make healthy food choices, and might lead to you having more ready-made or take-away meals.
These usually contain more saturated fat – which is linked to weight gain – as well as sugar and salt, compared to home-cooked meals, and often have larger portion sizes too.
Another change in lifestyle could be that, like many people, you’re working from home more now, and have less opportunity to exercise on the way to work.
Having excess weight or obesity can also make it harder to exercise.
The NHS recommends 150 minutes of moderate intensity activity, like cycling or brisk walking, a week.
But research shows that people living with obesity are less likely to exercise for this amount of time each week, than people who are not obese.
2. Work out your healthy weight
Set yourself a weight loss target by working out your body mass index (BMI), which compares your weight to your height to see if you’re healthy, overweight or you have obesity.
You can use our BMI calculator to work out your BMI, and how much weight you need to lose for a healthy weight.
If you weigh more than is healthy for your height, you do not have to take extreme measures to lose weight quickly.
Instead, break your weight loss down into small goals and focus on each step at a time.
If you have a lot of excess weight, start by aiming to lose 10 per cent of your body weight.
This will feel more achievable, but will still have big health benefits even if your BMI is still classed as overweight afterwards.
And try not to be disheartened if it’s going to take a long time to get to your ideal weight. It probably took a long time for you to gain the weight too.
3. Make changes that work for your lifestyle
To see a long-term impact on your weight, you need to make changes for good, so it's important that your weight loss plan is something you can stick to.
Making small changes to your lifestyle can feel insignificant, but they gradually add up over time.
You might find it helpful not to think about a ‘diet’, but rather a lifestyle approach you can keep to over a long time.
Some people find eating less fat or carbohydrates works, some count calories, while others lower their calorie intake on certain days.
A combination of diet changes and getting more active has been shown to be more effective than just changing what you eat, so think about ways to include exercise into your routine too.
This might be walking or cycling instead of driving, a home exercise workout, or meeting a friend for a walk or a run.
If the NHS’s recommended 150 minutes of moderate intensity activity a week seems like a lot to begin with, try breaking this down into 10-minute chunks.