Why Yo-Yo dieting can Devastate your
Health.
The amount of fat stored in the body will increase with every diet the slimmer embarks on. When a person loses weight, both fat and muscle tissues are lost. When the weight is regained, as it always is, it is usually made up of a greater proportion of fat and less lean muscle, leaving the person with more fat stores than before. Besides that, a history of loss and gain is associated with greater amounts of fat stored in the abdomen, a pattern of fat distribution linked to greater risk of heart disease and diabetes.
Some studies suggest that Yo-yo dieting may increase the risk for certain health problems. These include high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and gallbladder disease.
The yo-yo diet is one type in a class of many extreme fad diets. Also known as “weight cycling,” the yo-yo diet is characterized by a cyclical pattern of repetitious loss and gain of body weight. Some of the ways people choose to do this include skipping meals and consuming very few calories, practically starvation tactics. However, the yo-yo diet is an unsuccessful and even harmful weight loss technique. Dieters often experience initial success, but due to its overwhelming toll on the body, the inability to continue this strict regime of weight loss in the long run causes dieters to regain all of it back and then some.
Repeated cycles of loss and gain take a psychological toll. Many dieters perceive each unsuccessful attempt to keep
weight off as a personal failure. The result, over time, is erosion of self-esteem coupled with depression and even guilt.
This pattern of losing and regaining weight is weakening their immune systems. Women who have tried to lose weight this way more than five times will have about a third lower natural-killer-cell function. On the other hand,women who manage to maintain their weight for five or more years have 40 percent greater natural-killer-cell activity as compared to those whose weight had remained stable for less than two years.
Nature is a wonderful thing, when a person tries to go on a starvation diet,
their weight loss consists of losing both muscle and body fat. When the body senses that it is quickly losing its energy source, it kicks on its famine response, a defense mechanism that aims to protect fat stores by using up lean tissue and muscle for energy instead. This weakens the stability of muscles. Because the amount of muscle in the body is directly proportional to metabolic rate, a loss of muscle also means the loss of metabolic rate. While this process naturally occurs in the case of actual famine, it is not suitable or healthy for a regular weight-loss diet.
The yo-yo diet works in such a way that it is harder each time to lose weight. As the yo-yo nears the end of its string, the plastic spool starts spinning slower. Similarly, the yo-yo diet follower may find it more and more difficult to lose any weight, leading to depression and lack of self esteem. As soon as the dieter starts attempting to eat normally again, all the weight regained will be stored in the form of fat. The yo-yo diet essentially tampers with a healthy body’s normal fat-to-muscle ratio, which is a primary aspect of good health.
Fad diets in general are too extreme on the human body. Many times, radical food deprivation is misleadingly perceived as a substitute for good diet and exercise habits. However, people’s susceptibility to the yo-yo diet process is the result of many dynamic factors, including biological factors (genetics, hormones, and biochemicals), emotional and motivational support, and misguided expectations. The environment also plays a huge role, since everywhere we turn we face pressures from images in mass media of supposedly perfect body shapes.
Experts agree that the yo-yo diet is not a healthy way to lose weight in the long run. Alternatives that help dieters lose their excess poundage without altering the body’s fat to muscle ratio do exist. Some of these tips include:
1. Aiming for achievable, small weight loss goals
2.Cutting calorie consumption gradually over time
3. Always eating breakfast
4. Modifying exercise and activty levels to sustain muscle mass while losing weight
5. Taking a really close look at what motivates you when, and why you eat
Is your weight getting you down? For some real help and fresh insights into weightloss, try this:
