Avoid Yoyo Dieting

Yoyo dieting is responsible for a lot of misery. Avoid it at all costs.

We’ve all done it. Crash diet one week or one month, binge the next. We regain all the weight we lost and then some. It never solves anybody’s weight problem, it makes it worse.

In some cases, it even causes a weight problem in somebody who was never overweight at all … until they started dieting.

Yoyo dieting can cause many health problems. It also slows down the metabolism so that it becomes harder and harder for us to lose weight.

To understand this, you need to remember that the body was not built for our modern way of life. It expects our food supply to depend on climate and seasons, not on which diet we are following this month.

If the body is subjected to periods of severe food restriction followed by feasting, it’s going to think that we are living in very unpredictable conditions. Sometimes there is plenty of food, but there are many sudden famines when we have very little to eat.

Our body does not know that these famines are self-imposed. It thinks it should be prepared, because a much longer famine might be right around the corner. So let’s slow down the metabolism, it thinks. Let’s make the most of these feasts by storing as much energy as we can in the form of fat.

This is why yoyo dieting actually makes us fatter. It also makes it harder and harder for us to lose weight.

What do we do then? Usually, we look for stricter and stricter diets. The diets are followed by bigger and longer binges, and the problem gets worse and worse.

If you are a victim of yoyo dieting, there is only one way to break the pattern. That is, to get into a routine of healthy eating at regular times with the aim of stabilizing your weight – not losing.

Eat little and often, planning either a meal or a healthy snack every 2-3 hours. At the same time, increase your physical activity levels.

If you do this, your body will slowly come to trust that your food supply is now much more predictable. It will allow your metabolism to increase, and it will realize that you will probably not need all of the extra fat that it has been storing.

Result? You finally start to lose weight – for good.