The secret? There are no secrets. Just a whole lot of common sense. – By Selene Yeager.

You know those folks who seemingly effortlessly stay lean year in and year out? Everyone wants to know their secret. After all, yo-yoing up and down between gaining, losing, and regaining weight is discouraging, maybe unhealthy, and if it means buying multiple kits, expensive.

To help us out, the Cornell Food and Brand Lab researchers developed an online Global Healthy Weight Registry where men and women of healthy weight could answer questions about their diet, exercise, and daily routine habits. After analysing the data, the researchers found that successful weight maintainers do the following:

1. Start the day with a healthy morning meal

Researchers continue to debate whether breakfast is the most important meal of the day. One thing is clear: For people who maintain a healthy weight, eating breakfast is non-negotiable. A whopping 96% of the registrants said they eat breakfast—and a healthy one at that. About a third of them listed eggs as their favorite breakfast food and 51% included fruits and veggies with their AM meal. Cyclists sometimes rise and ride on an empty stomach to fire up their fat-burning metabolism. That’s okay. But be sure to either eat breakfast on the bike if you’re going longer than 90 minutes to 2 hours or top off your tank with a good meal asap après ride.

2. Eat mindfully

You won’t catch a healthy weight maintainer single-fistedly scarfing down a chili dog while surfing social media. They report “non-restrictive” but effective mindful clean eating strategies that include eating whole, non-processed foods, cooking at home, and tuning into inner cues to determine when they’re really hungry (not just bored) and when they’re full. As a cyclist, sometimes it’s easy to crack open a bar before a ride or stuff down a pastry or two midway through a Saturday outing. If you struggle with weight swings, this could be a good place to clean house. Make your own, more natural ride foods and think twice about whether you really need the Danish as big as your face when something lighter might do.

3. Exercise nearly every day

No surprise here. Weight maintainers are an active bunch. Forty two percent of them exercise 5 to 7 days a week. If you fit this bill, keep it up. If you’re off the back a bit, consider starting a bicycling ride streak to make cycling a regular habit.

4. Serve up veggies for dinner daily

If there is a more perfect food than a plant it must be on another planet, because people who eat the most of them have the lowest rates of all kinds of chronic diseases and, according to the registry, maintain their weight. Sixty five percent of the responders to this survey ate vegetables at dinner every single evening. As an active cyclist, you should be aiming for at least 2 ½ cups (a serving size is a cup) of a variety of vegetables each day based on a 2,000-calorie diet.

5. Don’t diet

Surprise: Weight maintainers don’t diet. Or rarely do. Seventy four percent of the registrants said they never or rarely diet to maintain their weight. You know why? Because diets don’t work. As a cyclist, following a restrictive diet can prevent you from getting the nutrients you need to fuel and recover from hard rides. Don’t do it. Follow all these other tips, instead.

6. Choose chicken

Kind of interesting, but not surprising. Weight maintainers like chicken. I mean we all do, right? But 61 percent of them list chicken as their favorite meat. It makes perfect sense. Four ounces of chicken has just 124 calories, a healthy 26 grams of satisfying protein, and goes well in soups, salads, stir-fries and pretty much whatever. Unless you’re a vegetarian, chicken is a smart staple.

7. Snack smart

Sixty five percent of weight maintainers listed fruit and/or nuts as their favorite snack go-tos. No-brainer for cyclists here. Bananas are a jersey pocket staple; and nuts like pistachios are brimming with muscle-mending protein and healthy inflammation-fighting fats, plus antioxidants that can fight cell damage.

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