You have done it several times. You altered you’re eating habits and gazed at the scale fall in response. You reduced weight.
Then, at some stage, it happens and you feel that following a strict diet such as keto or paleo is not for you, or you cannot commit to never eating your favorite dessert again. In short, what you had been doing didn’t work for you in the long run, and you went back to your earlier eating habits. You also got back the weight.
This is called yo-yo dieting, and when you look at this scientifically, you will learn that it is not completely your fault. Your body is simply attempting to reach homeostasis or that natural equilibrium where it is at a weight that is easier and familiar. Luckily, one can overcome this vicious cycle and reach his/her goal weight.
After all, that is what being resilient is all about: coming back in the face of adversity. Indeed, one survey found that among those classified as resilient, 71% maintain a philosophy of “Let’s do something about it” rather than giving up and having an “It is what it is” approach. However, to overcome these weight variations, you need to understand the basics of this common phenomenon, says dietician Avni.
What is yo-yo dieting and how usual it is actually?
The term used clinically for yo-yo dieting is weight cycling, which means putting up weight unintentionally thereafter dieting in response and losing a little weight, and getting back that weight once again. One goes back on a weight loss diet, and this cycle repeats.
Though fad diets make huge promises, they have a bitter reality. They are generally not made for lasting impact. Past studies quoted in the Obesity Reviews paper note that around 80% of people who reduce a significant amount of weight (defined as at least 10% of their beginning body weight) regain it within a year.
The highs and lows have been observed to backfire too, eventually forcing you further away from your target. In one study published in March 2018 in Preventive Medicine, researchers studied more than ten thousand middle-aged people in the Australian Longitudinal Study of Women’s Health for 12 years. Around 40% said that they had weight cycled. Healthy or overweight females who were “recurrent weight cyclers” (defined as intentionally reducing 4.98952 kg or more at least three times) gained more weight compared to those who kept their weight more stable. (This was not true for women who were obese.) Repeated weight cyclers also turned to dangerous means more often to reduce weight, like laxatives, diuretics, or diet pills.
Is yo-yo dieting not good for your health? Here are the facts research indicates.
There has been some debate about what yo-yo dieting can actually do to you, in terms of your health.
Some people say that any success at reducing weight — no matter how temporary — is a victory, and data on the bad effects is mixed. For example, a published study in the journal Metabolism analyzed more than 400 individuals, overweight and inactive post-menopausal females, and found that those having a history of yo-yo dieting were heavier and less healthy metabolically. But the researchers indicated that their poorer metabolic health was because of the higher body mass index (BMI) or bigger body fat, and not due to the weight cycling itself. More essentially, future attempts to reduce weight were still worth it. They were still capable of healthy lifestyle habits, reducing weight, and observing their health improve (they had better insulin function, for example).
Yet the recent study is throwing some light on ways weight fluctuations could be hazardous. In a study published and printed in December 2018, which was conducted on 6.7 million people, participants who had the biggest amount of variability in blood pressure, glucose, cholesterol numbers — something that could have been because of weight swings — as well as BMI that had gone up 2.3 times, they had higher odds of death from any factor compared with those who had the most even-keeled scores. When checking BMI particularly, those who had the biggest amount of BMI variability had around 14% higher risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke. Note, although, that one limitation to this study is that the authors were not able to differentiate between those people who reduced weight intentionally or unintentionally. As for mental health, one could see how this weight reduction whiplash could be psychologically tiring. Also, the Preventive Medicine study found that weight-cycling women were 50% more liable to suffer from depressive symptoms. Yet researchers mentioned that it wasn’t certain if mental health struggles pave the way to weight gain — or if the stress of dieting was the factor of the depressive symptoms.
The scientific logic, why one is yo-yo dieting in the first instance
If you identify yourself as being in this procedure, know that it is normal and there is no guilt. Diets that promise restriction mostly leads to “overcompensation” or bingeing. Over a period of time, this goes into a chronic cycle,
The necessity to eat and feed yourself properly is a matter of biology. Dieticians like to sum it up in this manner: You did not fail the diet — the diet failed you. The thing that you are dealing with is actually biology. It is so potent, and no amount of willpower or diet plan will let you overcome what your body is programmed to do. As soon as you restrict excessive, limiting a macronutrient (carbohydrates, fat, protein) and calories, the body reacts by slowing the metabolism. In short: You never lose as rapidly and are perhaps to gain weight in the long-term. Also, once you reduce weight, your metabolism slows naturally. A smaller body needs fewer calories.
Researchers further explained why weight can rapidly rebound. When checking at 14 of the past participants in the extreme weight reduction show, they found that their resting metabolic rate reduced by 704 calories each day, on average. Essentially, it means their metabolism slowed down.
One would expect metabolism to slow post weight loss because their bodies were smaller. But even after weight regains, their resting metabolic continued to be less than what was expected for their now-larger pools.
Another logic for the gain? It’s vital to remember the details of the competition: Participants worked out for multiple hours a day with a trainer and had food given to them. Once they were left on their own again, they no longer had that access to those things, so it was possibly harder to maintain their weight in a real-life setting.
This is what researchers found was crucial to maintaining weight loss: exercise. Exercising played a key role.
How to be on track through your weight loss program
The to and fro will set you up to feel like a failure.
One could get off the weight ride — it’s feasible to shackle free of the fads, put in your mental work, and come out healthier and happier than earlier. No more feeling that you are a failure since you could not stick to a fad diet.
Here are ways to begin.
Reduce the restriction: Look out for any diet that prevents a complete food group or pushes you to cut out all that you love. It is these unrealistic regimens that create this weight cycle.
Get a mental shift: A big part of the yo-yo is not altering the basic psychology behind eating,” say psychologists. Since the environment is filled with these triggers (such as the neon glow of a fast-food restaurant on your way home from a stressful day at work), shedding weight is not about how much will strength one has or how well one can obey diet rules. “While the majority of people can go on any given diet for a certain duration, it does not address the triggers or links that lead one down a road of weight gain in the first instance. This is why it’s so simple to go back to your earlier habits.
Get help: Whether your target is to lose weight or follow healthy habits that will improve your health (with or without weight loss as the end result), avail the wisdom of someone, preferably a professional who knows these things and can guide you along the way.
Think of your headspace: You need to address your relationship with food, specifically if you have formed fears surrounding food. Is there a possibility of disordered eating? Disordered eating is a bigger term that never fits into usual definitions such as anorexia or bulimia, but it still needs to be taken seriously, as it could lead to health issues, according to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Talk to your dietitian about that.
See beyond scale weight: Are you sleeping fine? Exercising adequately? While it almost seems simpler to measure progress with the scale, these are mostly overlooked alterations that affect your overall health.
The insights have been shared by an eminent weight loss dietician in India, Avni Kaul.
