 What Causes Yo-Yo Dieting?
When your diet includes sessions of starvation, missing meals, or very low calories - you are setting yourself up for the yo-yo effect. Whereas it seems that good results can be achieved rapidly, in due course, the body gets the allusion that fewer calories are coming in. The body becomes accustomed, and decides that energy must be conserved and metabolism, the way the body burns food for energy, begins to hold up. Often this can be a 'plateau' - the weight loss that was primarily achieved begins to slow down or stop.
Yo-Yo Diets and Weight Cycling
How many times have you effectively lost weight - only to gain it again further down the track? Some people cope with this for most of their lives. This is "yo-yo" dieting - an ongoing model of gaining and losing weight. Sometimes it is called "weight cycling".
Lots of people are at a deadlock at this moment, and, struggling to keep the diet, the weight begins to come back on. And what's even worse, is that for some people, the lowered metabolism means they wind up with more weight than what they started at!
This is one of the problems with dieting - as a sudden fad - the body's metabolism becomes less well-organized with each dieting period. The strict calorie control also causes loss of muscle tone. Less muscle once more means a slower metabolism. The commons signs of this are sagging upper arms, because of loss of triceps muscle tone and following fat gain.
Yo-yo dieting is defined by alternating periods of feast and famine (that the dieter deliberately undertakes). It is a particularly ineffective method of sustaining weight loss.
The human body responds to hunger by decreasing metabolism. When food is again obtainable, it is stored instantly as fat. This survival mechanism, while a useful response to genuine food insufficiency, leaves the yo-yo dieter feeling lethargic and fatigued (and defeated).
Metabolism can be reinstated to a higher level with exercise and a reasonable weight-loss diet. This diet is defined by the minimum safe daily caloric intake of 75 percent of the basal metabolic rate. (Those eating less should do so only under medical control. Parents and guardians should consult medical professionals before placing their children on any type of diet.)
On one occasion an ideal weight is attained, a weight-maintenance diet is necessary. This requires limiting excess caloric intake and making small changes in caloric intake in response to physical clarification (of one's weight and appearance).
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