NO-NO TO YO-YO DIETING (WEIGHT CYCLING)

Losing weight quickly by dieting, then regaining it by eating again as you used to, then starting all over with another diet to lose weight, regaining weight again, losing it again, then putting on weight over and over during several years is called the yoyo effect and is the origin of overweight, obesity and depression. The yoyo effect results in a series of weight loss followed by weight regains which are dangerous for our physical as well as mental health. This succession of good news followed by disappointments can be depressing. With the years passing by, people who engage in these diets enter a vicious cycle: after each weight loss, the weight regain that follows is worse than the previous one making them feel they need to diet harder than before. Thus the successive diets carried out cause people to be overweight, which in turn can lead to putting on more than 20% of their ‘normal’ weight and for certain people obesity (which is far worse than an aesthetic matter).

Bad diets lead to yoyo effect

1. Extreme diets because they are too restrictive are risky

2. These bad diets do not teach you how to eat normally in a balanced way during or after the diet ‘blitz’.

3. The same nutritional mistakes will be repeated a few weeks or a few months later

Effects of yoyo diets on our health

1. The regained weight is increasingly difficult to lose: the body remembers the effects of calorie deprivation caused by the series of diets over the years, and stores more in reserve in preparation for ‘famine’ (future diets).

2. The progressive development of obesity

3. A shortened life expectancy

4. A decrease of “good” (HDL) cholesterol which protects from cardiovascular diseases thus increasing cardiovascular disease risks (infection, arteritis…)

5. Appearance of emotional imbalances related to these successive failures.

6. These yoyos diets do not lead to any learning process in good eating habits and after each diet, the bad habits resume.

So what is the solution?

The only solution is to realise that repeating the same (or similar) diets is likely to produce similar or identical results. Namely, short term success in losing weight followed by regaining the weight lost and very often more than lost. Regaining the weight is not a personal failure because most of these fab diets are not designed to help you retain your lower weight. They’re only designed for rapid drop. And rapid drop is unhealthy for many reasons which are beyond the scope of today’s blurb

What you really need is realisation that losing weight and retaining a lower weight requires a long term commitment and re-learning nutritional habits. This is best achieved by adopting a wholistic approach which combines balanced nutrition, exercise and reduction of stress.