Is yo-yo dieting hazardous to your health?
It's a disturbing statistic.
59% of people are either overweight or obese according to Statistics Canada.
Which means chances are you know someone personally who may have struggled with what's
known as "yo-yo dieting."
That someone might even be you.
Because it affects so many people, today I'm going to take a look at what causes yo-yo dieting
and whether or not it's harmful to your health.
The actual term "yo-yo dieting" was coined by American scientist and renowned obesity expert
Kelly David Brownell in the 1980s. It's also known as the "yo-yo effect" and "weight cycling."
The definition of yo-yo dieting is "repeated losses and regains of body weight."
Here are the basic steps of how it occurs:
Step 1: You go on a low calorie diet of say 1,000 calories a day.
Step 2: Your body then goes into what's called famine mode. Famine mode is when your body
thinks it's starving so it adjusts by slowing down your metabolism. It conserves fat and begins to
burn muscle instead (which means you'll burn fewer calories and lose less weight.)
Step 3: After a while 1,000 calories per day becomes more difficult to maintain. Hunger, fatigue
and even depression may occur.
Step 4: You go back to your old eating habits. Anything over your 1,000 calorie a day intake
results in you gaining weight.
Step 5: Within months you are right back where you started (or possibly even heavier) so you go
back to step one and start all over again.
Can you relate even a little bit to the above?
There's a good chance you can as a recent study found that 71 percent of Canadians have tried to
lose weight at one point or another. What's more, the typical dieter attempts to lose weight four
times each year.
Recently the world did receive good news when it comes to yo-yo dieting.
For the longest time, it was thought that yo-yo dieting actually damaged your metabolism.
Meaning that with each successive yo-yo dieting cycle, it made it more difficult for you to lose
weight.
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A 2013 study published in the journal Metabolism found yo-yo dieting does not damage
metabolism.
Having said that, yo-yo dieting can definitely be detrimental to your health. I've put together
five reasons you should avoid yo-yo dieting at all costs. Yo-yo dieting...
1. Increases your stress hormone - When you go on a low calorie diet, your body emits
more of the stress hormone cortisol. In an article published on the Psychology Today
website, athlete and author Christopher Bergland calls cortisol "public enemy number 1."
He writes that "Scientists have known for years that elevated cortisol levels: interfere
with learning and memory, lower immune function and bone density, increase weight
gain, blood pressure, cholesterol, heart disease... The list goes on and on." Clinical
studies done by Yale University (and many other universities) found that bringing
cortisol levels down can reduce body-fat levels, control blood pressure, improve insulin
sensitivity, balance blood sugar levels, and control appetite.
2. Boosts up the level of other hormones - Integrative medicine physician Andrea
Pennington, MD, says that “Repeated crash dieting increases metabolic hormones, such
as insulin, and elevates levels of sex hormones, including estrogen. These changes cause
you to start putting on weight around your middle, which research has linked to insulin
resistance, diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease.”
3. Can play havoc with your confidence - If added stress wasn't enough, yo-yo dieting can
also give your confidence a severe beating. New York City dietician Keri Gans, RD,
says, “The more times you go through the gain-lose-gain cycle, the less convinced you
become that you can break free from the constant ups and downs. No one wants to diet
forever; it’s hard work.”
4. Could damage your heart - Women who weight-cycle five times or more during their
lifetime may be damaging their hearts in the process according to a study published in
Clinical Cardiology.
5. It could damage your immune system - Cornelia Ulrich, M.D., of the Fred Hutchinson
Cancer Research Center in Seattle, did a study that found that women who repeatedly lost
and gained weight had lower immune function, particularly lower counts of natural killer
cells. "These cells are important for fending off infections and are also vital in fighting
the early stages of cancer," Ulrich says. Women who had yo-yo dieted more than five
times had a reduction by one third of their natural killer-cell activity.
So what's the answer?
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With being overweight so hazardous to one's health, if you do have some extra pounds the
answer is not to throw up your hands and say "I give up."
Regular exercise is key. As is what you eat of course. For years we've been told that "diets don't
work." It's true, they don't. While you may lose weight, chances are you'll gain it all back (and
possibly more) once you revert back to your old way of eating.
The key is not to diet, but to change your day to day eating habits for life. Because here's the
thing, it's often not how much someone eats, but what they eat.
Education is the key. You must learn to eat healthy in a way that is sustainable for life. This
means taking a balanced macronutrient (the three macronutrients are fat, protein and
carbohydrates) approach to what you eat so that you can once and for all make yo-yo dieting a
thing of the past.
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