The Yo-Yo Diet

Due to the influx of exercise and diet goals during this month I thought I would address this issue. The health market is flooded with all sorts of diets, and following them are all sorts of myths and facts. Now how do you know which diets are worth a try, and which diets you should stay away from?

There are a few things to look at when deciding whether a diet is going to help you or hurt you. The first is to remember that in order to function properly your body needs a balanced diet. A balanced diet will provide you with all the nutrients, vitmains, minerals, and compounds that your body needs. If you’re lacking in something it could actually prevent your body from maintaining a healthy weight.

Many diets have certain days where you can only eat select foods. For example some diets only allow you to drink juice, or only eat soup for a week. There are many varieties of these restrictive diets, but in the end none of them are good for you. With some of these diets you may actually see weight loss results, but in the end they are depriving your body of nutrients, and the majority of the results are not long term.

Another common characteristic of yo-yo diets are extremely restricted calorie intake. No matter how much weight you want to lose you should never go below 1200 cal/day without a doctors supervision. You body needs a certain amount of nutrients just to keep itself going. Limiting calories may actually make your body store fat because it thinks it’s starving.

Yo-Yo dieting has also been linked to higher rates of hyptertension and cardiovascular disease. This is because constantly losing and gaining weight can actually cause fat to travel through your arteries more often causing increased plaque build-up. So be careful is you are constantly gaining weight and then losing it. Overall lifestyle changes that promote healthy weight loss may take longer, but in the end they may save your life.

The last thing I want to address is the effect Yo-Yo dieting has on mood. Usually extreme diets that make you lose more than 7-14 pounds per week are severely restricting your food intake. This can make you cranky, and can even lead to binge eating after the first week or so.

As you can see there are a lot of draw-backs to Yo-Yo dieting. In the end they aren’t worth your time, or your health. Losing weight can be frustrating especially because it is usually a slow process. However, it’s important to remember that healthy weight loss that leads to long-term results is only about 1-2 pounds/week. So if you’re goal is to lose weight this year just remember that making healthy substitutions, and watching your portion sizes is one of the best ways to go.