It’s often more difficult to keep weight off than to lose it, but there is a way that people can use to keep the pounds from creeping back on, researchers say.

Previous studies have shown that human body has a complex system for regulating weight that centers on a “set point,” which is a genetically determined range of weight. When people diet and eat fewer calories, the body compensates by slowing metabolism down, so eventually the weight lost is regained.

Danish researchers put 20 healthy, but obese, people on an eight-week, low-calorie powder diet in which they lost an average 13 percent of their body weight. Afterwards, the participants entered a 52-week weight maintenance protocol, which consisted of regular meetings with a clinical dietician with instructions on lifestyle changes as well as diet calendar tracking. In case of weight gain, the participants could replace up to two meals per day with a low-calorie diet product.

If an overweight person is able to maintain an initial weight loss -- in this case for a year -- the body will eventually 'accept' this new weight and not fight against it, they discovered.

"The interesting and uplifting news in this study is that if you are able to maintain your weight loss for a longer period of time, it seems as if you have 'passed the critical point', and after this point, it will actually become easier for you to maintain your weight loss than it was immediately after the initial weight loss,” says Signe Sorensen Torekov, one of the researchers involved in the study, which appears in the European Journal of Endocrinology.