Who reading this hasn’t experienced yo-yo dieting?
Yo-yo dieting is where you lose weight, only to put it back on, again and again.
A direct result of this yo-yo dieting process is a feeling of failure but a key point to take note here is that these yo-yo weight loss programmes have failed you.
The only way to lose weight and keep it off long term is to address what we call your Mental Weight – looking at the habits and behaviours that are causing you to overeat in the first place and how this causes your weight to fluctuate up and down.
The negative effects of yo-yo dieting are important to consider. When you go on a quick fix diet or strict eating regime, your metabolism will adapt over time to what you are doing to your body. Our bodies are very resilient and capable ‘engines’ and have a predefined way of adopting to this new enforced stress.
This is Metabolic Adoption and is goes back to the time when we inhabited the earth as hunter/gatherers. When we’d go through a time of food scarcity our body would naturally store fat and hold on to whatever it could get to build energy reserves.
When the hunter/gatherer started eating again (the exact same as when you come off a diet) and reintroduce foods, the body reacts by storing everything if can and grips on to everything being put into it. This is in stark contrast to when the body maintains a constant balanced eating programme – weight gain is not accentuated but is maintained.
The key to a balanced programme is to ensure you are not going up and down with your eating patterns.
When clients engage with a healthy eating plan prescribed by their Motivation Weight Management advisor they can expect to experience a (positive) change in their metabolism. Metabolic adoption has kicked in in response to what they’ve been doing with other yo-yo diets over the previous months/years.
If you are keen to break the cycle of yo-yo diets, then listen to the podcast ‘How To Stop Yo-Yo Dieting’ and also take advantage of our FREE Mini Mental Weight Assessment.
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