Sticking to your diet can be hard, but coming off it can make things even harder in the long run. Every time you gain your weight back, it seems even more difficult to lose, and this can be a risk to your psychological wellbeing and lead to depression. According to New York City based dietician Jackie Newgent, R.D. this is because ‘no matter how you drop pounds – whether it’s through dieting, exercise, or a combination of both – you will inevitably lose some muscle, and that slows down your basal metabolic rate’.
The yoyo diet was evaluated by researchers at the University of Melbourne, who helped 50 obese adults through eight weeks of an extreme 500 – 550 calories per day, to the point where the test subjects had lost an average of 30 pounds. The researchers then supported the dieters for a year to help them to stick to their new dietary habits, but the participants actually regained an average of 11 pounds, and reported feeling more food-obsessed and hungry than they had before they’d started dieting.
The researchers found that the participants had a 20% higher lever of an appetite -stimulating hormone, whilst the appetite suppressing hormones which the body produces naturally were considerably lower than normal. Joseph Proietto, professor of medicine, was one of the researchers, and described the effect as a ‘co-ordinated defence mechanism with multiple components all directed toward making us put on weight’. This means that essentially the patients’ bodies had launched a ‘fight’ against dieting, as it is believed by many biologists that the human body has been designed to survive long periods of starvation.
Another study based around the concept of ‘yoyo dieting’ has shown that it can negatively impact your emotional and psychological wellness, leading to conditions such as depression and guilt. It showed that when you stop dieting, it tends to bring up feelings of failure, so you ultimately put the weight back on again. Then by yo-yoing, or continuing the cycle, you could end up believing that you really are a failure, which not only impacts on your weight loss but could affect your social relationships. Many dieters feel under pressure to avoid social situations and express embarrassment about admitting to others that they’re back on a diet, which causes them to quit and resent others for their weight gain.
What it all boils down to is that you should be looking at ways to achieve weight control, rather than watching your weight rise and fall. It really is a case of ‘everything in moderation’ over drastic action, and, this way, your weight and your wellness will be secure.
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