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The Truth About Yo-Yo Dieting: Why It Can Actually Lead to Weight Gain

Writer's picture: Samantha WilliamsSamantha Williams


‘Eat less and exercise more’ was a message that was drummed into my teenage brain and many others who grew up in the 90s, with lycra clad waifs doing aerobics on TV as the norm.  Sadly this message still pervades the psyche of many men and women of my generation and has resulted in many 40-50+ year olds being stuck in the loop of yo-yo dieting or weight cycling as it's also called.  Times have moved on and so has our level of understanding of the human body, nutrition and what it takes to reach and sustain a healthy body weight. We also know the detrimental impact that yo-yo dieting has on the metabolism, body composition (amount of fat and muscle) and hunger, as well as the mental health implications it has. Here I aim to clarify the real impact that this type of dieting has on the body in the hope that it will help you to get out of the cycle and adopt a more sustainable approach to nutrition and health.


What Is Yo-Yo Dieting?


Dieting in its essence is restrictive and works on the principle that if you cut down your food intake, you’ll consume less calories and so your body will automatically lose weight. However, if you have ever tried a restrictive diet, you’ll know from your own experience that it is unsustainable and eventually comes to an end, often with a binge or ‘f@*k it’ approach. This is because your body is very clever at adapting to changes. When you cut calories the body responds by slowing down your metabolism (basically the chemical reactions happening in your body to release energy). The reason it does this is to conserve energy in the period of starvation it is experiencing. What do you think happens when the body is starved? You get hungry and the more you restrict, the hungrier you’ll get over time. Maybe you lose some weight and you feel pleased about that, so you allow yourself a glass of wine one evening which leads on to a packet of crisps, but promise yourself you’ll be ‘good’ the next day.


This is not low will power, but rather a biological drive for survival which you are trying to overcome with (no offence) a much weaker mind. The survival drive is strong for all animals (yes humans are animals), and trying to override it like this is never going to work. Eventually that chocolate doughnut looks just too tempting and you cave in. That first bite tastes so good, so good that you eat the whole thing in 2 minutes flat. Then you want another one. Your body is singing ‘Hallelujah’ as it receives the fat and sugar which will give it the energy it needs. In your head you think ‘fuck it, I’ve ruined it now anyway’. You give into that deep hunger and begin to eat more than you were eating before the diet to compensate for the restrictive period. This seems like an uncontrollable hunger and that's because it is. It’s not driven by your mind, but by your hormones and the need to refuel the fat cells which are now empty. 


Only now, your metabolism is slower, and so you don’t use up as much of the energy as you would have done before the diet.  The excess is stored in the body as fat. Another thing that happens in periods of starvation is that new fat tissue can be formed, a bit like buying new jerry cans to fill up on fuel before a petrol strike, so that during the refeeding period they can store extra energy (fat) in preparation for the next period of famine. This is in fact a very useful survival mechanism for humans who are living in the old hunter gatherer way. But not so useful for those of us living in the westernised world of excess food and consumerism. Our bodies are designed for feast and famine, but now we feast and feast and feast. So the feasting period results in weight gain, and a situation called weight recidivism.


Long Term Effects Of Yo-Yo Dieting


Have you ever noticed that you gain more weight after a diet? Does it get harder and harder to lose it as time goes by? This is a result of the metabolic changes that the body goes through during restrictive periods. Weight recidivism occurs when after a diet and refeeding, the individual's weight overshoots the original weight prior to the diet. Thsi can happen time and time again, leading to weight gain and is why those who are chronic dieters are more likely to be overweight than those who have never been on a diet. Chronic dieters are also at increased risk of disease development being more likely to have metabolic diseases and heart disease, non alcoholic fatty liver disease or to develop type 2 diabetes. Not only this but dieters are more likely to live with poorer mental health outcomes like depression, anxiety, low self worth and body dissatisfaction. Those who diet are often stuck in a cycle of failure, in a system that is not designed for success. Yo-yo dieting leads to increased feelings of frustration and guilt around food, and can lead to disordered eating; the prerequisite to eating disorders, in particular binge eating behaviours. The other downside of this behaviour is that it stops you enjoying food. If one of your favourite snacks is marmite on toast, then cutting out carbs so you can’t eat bread is only going to make you sad and more likely to have a bread binge when the diet ends which it definitely will. 


Instead Of Dieting Try This….


So what's the answer? I hear you cry. Here I’ll share with you 3 golden rules that you can follow which will help you to achieve a healthy weight and sustain it for life.


  1. Eat whole foods - This is harder than it sounds these days because we can often more easily find highly processed foods like a chocolate bar, rather than an apple. Also the chocolate bar has been created to activate your brain’s pleasure centres which make you want to eat it in abundance. But that aside, if you can start to consume whole foods as often as possible and by whole foods I mean foods which look like their original ingredients (low processed) e.g. vegetables, nuts, seeds, whole grains like brown rice and quinoa, fruits, fish, eggs, meat (if you eat these), beans, lentils. If you pick up a food, look at the ingredients and it contains names of chemicals that you don’t find in a normal kitchen or you don't recognise, it’s probably not real food but ultra processed food (UPF) and so won’t keep you full or satisfied. Whole foods contain more nutrients than UPF and in particular fibre which contributes to satisfaction. Also protein contaiuning foods will prevent hunger for longer; beans are a great way to consume both these nutrients in one.  Plus they are low in saturated fat so reduce the energy you’re consuming.

  2. Exercise moderately - I know that this may seem like a radical idea, but let me explain. If you’re exercising intensively to try and lose weight, as well as restricting food intake, you’re going to get more hungry AND you’re more likely to over eat foods which are high in energy, yes you guessed it, more refined sugar and fat, and make poorer food choices. So if you switch to doing more moderate exercise like walking for example, it’s likely to reduce your hunger and mean you’re more likely to stick with the exercise long term. It's unrealistic to think you’re going to go to the gym everyday, so set yourself more achievable goals and ones which fit around your lifestyle. Do an activity you enjoy too so you can get pleasure from it and get fit too.

  3. Eat a satisfying meal - skipping breakfast and going to the gym instead, then eating some salad at lunch time is going to have the opposite effect on your body to what you want. It is going to leave you starving by 3pm when you’re more likely to grab a chocolate bar or eat a cake as you have an afternoon slump. If you eat a satisfying breakfast after the gym and a nourishing lunch (to 80% fullness), you’ll find that you have more energy to exercise after work and won’t get the crash mid afternoon that leads to suagr cravings and bingeing behaviour. This may be counterintuitive to you but I can assure you, restricting food during the day is not going to nourish you or make you feel energised, plus it’s going to make you more likely to eat a high calorie meal for dinner resulting in that familiar guilt and feelings of failure, which ends in you feeling bad about yourself and your lack of willpower. 


Change Is Challenging


Making these changes may feel scary at first, and goes against what you believe about dieting. But remember that diets are not designed to be sustainable and so if you want to be a healthy weight for life, you need to do something different. Einstein said ‘doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, is the definition of insanity’ and that can certainly be true in the world of dieting. You need to find a sustainable way of eating that can fit around your life. Finding this magic formula takes time and patience. Remember that your body weight does not determine your success as a human being, and dieting only focuses on your body weight. It does not consider your overall health (physical and mental) or your wellbeing, and can actually be very damaging if it becomes chronic. It is my hope that you can escape the weight cycling loop, and free yourself from that trap. If you follow the golden rules above, you will still be able to enjoy food but start to feel the benefits of health and body fat will drop off you too. 


Next Steps


Working with an expert to guide tou on this journey can be the difference between success and failure. If you’d like to discuss this with me further, reach out via my website and we can arrange a free call to discuss your health situation and what you’re hoping to achieve.  Visit www.naturalnut.co.uk to book your free call and let's chat about how I can help.



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