Yo-Yo Dieting

When you try to lose weight, many times you jump from diet to diet trying to find the one that is the right fit for you and your lifestyle. Although the switch from one diet to the next may initially help you lose weight, often times you gain all the weight you lost back—and then some. When you do this repeatedly, this is called yo-yo dieting. It is also sometimes referred to as ‘weight cycling’ or ‘chronic dieting’.

Here is a typical yo-yo dieting scenario—see if this fits your dieting habits:

• You know you need to lose weight and want to achieve weight loss in the quickest manner possible. A new fad diet has just been released promising you will lose a great amount of weight in record time. It could be an extreme calorie restricted diet, a diet with injections, or a high protein diet—whatever is the latest rage on the market. You decide to try it.

• For the first while you are ‘pumped up’ and excited so you stick to the diet strictly…and you may even begin to lose weight.

• As time goes on, you find the diet overly restrictive or you begin to feel unwell. You could experience feeling tired all the time, hair loss, being constipated or even having achy joints or cramps. These symptoms may cause you to re-think the diet plan and feel it may not be a healthy choice—so you quit.

• You then return to your regular eating habits and may possibly eat even more than before because you may be feeding your depression (because of feeling deprived from the diet or even trying to compensate by feeding yourself more to overcome your feelings of failure).

• As a result, you find your weight increasing again. In the end you may have gained back all the weight you lost, plus more (due to your lowered metabolism and eating more to comfort yourself).

• The next new fad diet comes along, and in hopes of losing weight again, you try the newest offering.

• And the cycle continues…

Yo-yo dieting is often the result of a too restrictive low calorie diet. Low calorie diets tend to slow your metabolism down. Your body goes into its ‘starvation mode’. This means that your body isn’t getting enough food for energy and thinks it is being starved. Your body then slows down or plateaus. It then tries to set up reserves for this perceived starvation period and becomes more efficient at storing fat. Hence the weight slows down or the weight loss stops, and you may even gain weight.

Yo-yo dieting also tends to cause you to ignore your natural feelings of hunger and fullness. Relying solely on the measured portions and diet plan of one low calorie diet can make you feel deprived, which can then lead to binging and more weight gain. This leads to frustration and a lowered self-esteem. You often then decide that this particular diet isn’t working, so you move on to the next one in an effort to lose the weight that you have just regained. And the yo-yo dieting process continues.

One major problem with yo-yo dieting is that the body becomes less efficient with each diet attempted. This therefore decreases your body’s efficiency at losing weight and you may find dieting more of a struggle each time you move on to the next new diet. Also with severely restricted diets, you may encounter a loss of muscle tone. And less muscle causes your metabolism to slow down even further. A common indicator of loss of muscle tone is flabby upper arms, which is due to the loss of muscle tone in your triceps as well as subsequent fat gain.

The way to avoid the yo-yo dieting process is to go on a healthy diet regime. Losing weight at a slower pace and eating the right healthy foods will not cause your body to go into its ‘starvation mode’. You will also not feel as hungry or deprived by eating the right amount of healthy foods. And you will not have the feelings of unwellness that some fad diets tend to produce.

Take a good look at your past dieting history. If you find that you do fall into the pattern of yo-yo dieting, weight cycling or chronic dieting, it is time to stop this unproductive type of behavior. Find a healthy diet plan and follow it before trying any of the newest, latest fads that promise the world, but may only lead to another failed diet attempt.

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