Which of us hasn’t high-fived ourselves for fitting into our favourite jeans again, only to have to relegate them to the back of the wardrobe a few months later?
The statistics of on-again-off-again weight speak for themselves. By some estimates, 80 per cent of people who’ve lost fat regain it all, or more, after two years.
It’s enough to make you chuck in your gym towel and bury your face in a bowl of Revels.
While small fluctuations on your scales are completely normal, the unhealthy behaviour that experts refer to as “weight cycling” is not.
This behaviour is defined as a significant increase or decrease of body fat (generally 10 pounds or more) that occurs multiple times throughout your life.
Yo-yoing weight is not a good cycle to be on.
Along with the emotional toll is a physical one: not only is extra weight a health risk, studies have linked the gain-lose-gain cycle to high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease and even cancer.
You’re also more likely to end up weighing more: in an analysis of 31 long-term diet studies published in American Psychologist, about two-thirds of participants regained more fat than they’d initially lost.
If you go on a strict diet and gain the fat back quickly, you might lose a lot of muscle and regain a lot of fat.
Here are four healthy and proven ways, according to the science, on how to stop fat from coming back.
1. Don’t be too restrictive
Experts believe a yo-yo pattern is often the result of a diet that’s too restrictive, and a study reported in the journal Obesity backs that up.
It found that people who followed a very low-calorie diet regained significantly more fat than those on a more forgiving plan.
Many women try to lose fat on crash diets with too few calories. However, this quick-fix approach doesn’t work. It’s just not sustainable in the long term. Instead, make small changes you can maintain.
Frustratingly, even on a sensible diet, your body sheds pounds reluctantly.
It’s difficult to keep weight off because there is a metabolic overcompensation for fat loss.
If you decrease your body mass by 10 per cent, you would expect your metabolic rate to decrease by 10 per cent, but it actually slows down more than that, by about 11 to 15 per cent.
So, why does your own metabolism thwart you?
Simple. The body may perceive dieting as a threat to survival. It might not know the difference between Atkins and famine.
Indeed, weight cycling can actually change your physiology. So the more diets you’ve been on, the harder it becomes to lose fat.
Levels of your hunger hormone ghrelin increase, and those of your fullness hormone leptin decrease, so you feel less satiated.
If it’s not bad enough that your body can work against you when you’re trying to lose fat, there’s now compelling research to show that some people may actually be hardwired to yo-yo.
2. Be mindful of emotional triggers
Reward circuits in the brain are excessively activated simply by the smell of food – and stayed that way until those people finished eating whatever was on the plate in front of them.
This is a biological cause of conditioned hypereating. It’s the first time we can say ‘It’s not your fault’.
Evidence shows, that this reaction is partially learned, however –and that means that through conditioning, you can rewire your brain.
After all, the urge to yo-yo is not just physical; emotional triggers play a huge role too.
3. Work out your mind, too
A study of 200 overweight and obese people, published in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research, supports the importance of a behaviour-change approach.
Along with weight-loss techniques such as exercise and healthy eating, one group received an additional hour of acceptance-commitment therapy (ACT), where they learnt to change their behaviour; the other group just did an extra hour of low-intensity exercise.
After a year, a follow-up found that those in the therapy group had maintained their fat loss. The other group’s members had regained most or all of it.
4. Protect your immune system
Losing and gaining regularly takes a huge toll on your body.
Beyond aesthetics, such as a loss of skin elasticity, regaining weight burdens your arteries and skeletal system, and may stress the liver, which can become covered in fat.
Plus a study in Clinical Cardiology has found that women who weight cycle five times or more during their lifetimes may be damaging their hearts in the process.
But perhaps most startling is the dangerous and lasting effect it has on the immune system. According to the first study of the long-term impacts of yo-yo dieting, women who repeatedly lost and gained weight had poorer immune function, particularly lower counts of natural killer cells.
These cells are important for fending off infections and are also vital in fighting the early stages of cancer.
Low killer-cell activity is associated with higher rates of cancer. In her study of more than 100 overweight but otherwise healthy women, those who had yo-yoed five times or more decreased their bodies’ natural killer-cell activity by a third.
So, there you have it. Your ultimate guide to how to stop yo-yo dieting. Remember, the control is in your hands.
One last thing… you should try this 2-minute “after-dinner ritual” that
burns up to 2 pounds of belly fat per day…
“All
this by a 2-minute “after-dinner ritual?” I asked.
I
met an old friend for lunch last month and I was super impressed with how good
she looked.
She
said, “It’s not so much about the “after-dinner ritual”, but more about how it
gives you a regenerative form of deep sleep that is responsible for everything
we need to dramatically increase our fat burning metabolism and improve our
health and appearance.”
Even
though I was skeptical, I’ve been struggling with my weight over the last few
years, so I gave it a shot and watched the same video she did.
Well,
it’s only a couple weeks later and you know what they say about how “you can’t
transform your body overnight”…
They’re
right – it actually took me 16 days to lose 22 pounds.
Now
it’s my girlfriends asking ME what I’M doing differently 💅
Post A Comment:
0 comments: