The ups and downs of ‘Yo Yo Dieting’
Leading expert discusses the problems with trying to lose weight through ‘yo yo’ dieting, by Matt Kay
In our increasingly image conscious society it is not uncommon to come across a ‘yo yo’ dieter. In fact most of you reading this article will be one of them, which is no fault of your own. I will put my house on it that within the next month a celebrity magazine will publish a new wonder diet or reveal the magic weight loss cure that has dropped another celebrity to the dicing with death figure of a size zero.
Western civilisation has an obsession with losing weight but with so many options and conflicting views it is no wonder that we ‘yo yo diet. The bottom line is there is no such thing as a wonder diet or a magic pill (yet) that can help us achieve a combination of sustained weight loss and optimal health. However, there is a strategy that we can learn from civilisations much less sophisticated than our own.
‘Yo Yo’ Dieting & Weight Loss: Problem!
The use of the term ‘yo yo dieting’ refers to skipping from one dieting method to another in the pursuit of rapid weight loss. The problem with using dietary methods like the cabbage soup diet or the LA diet or any other fad diet is that you start to cause your body to become a fat storing machine. As with all these diets they are not sustainable and normally require you to significantly restrict foods like bread, pasta, rice and potatoes (complex carbohydrates). After you have lost the desired weight and you stop following the fad diet your body starts to produce a fat storing enzyme called LPL. When you go back to eating the carbohydrates you restricted during the diet the overactive LPL will start storing even more fat than you were before you started the diet. This is the reason why you see people that have lost weight quickly find it very difficult to keep the weight off and in some cases put even more weight back on.
What is the correct way?
We can learn a lot from a 20 year long research study conducted back in the 1960’s
by a dentist researching dental health between western civilisations and civilisations that had not been affected by the western world. The results of the research revealed that even with all our technology the civilisations not affected by western man had far superior dental care. Not only that, the health of the tribal communities was also far superior then that of the Westerners civilisations with a much lower incidence of obesity. In some tribal communities they didn’t even have a word for cancer because they never came across it.
The research also identified that the tribal communities that had been affected by Western man’s food (white flour, refined sugar etc) had much of the same diseases and poor health as we did, including a high rate of obesity, heart disease and cancers.
What we can take from this 20 year research study is that all these fad diets are just another indication of our ignorance. If we all ate what we were design to eat, which does not include anything in a packet or processed then the rate of obesity would not be an epidemic in UK society. As a general rule of thumb if a food is naturally grown without the use of pesticides, herbicides or fungicides or you eat cattle that have been raised on its natural foods without the use of artificial pellets or factory farming then this produce is good to eat.
Simple message to help YOU achieve optimal health:
Always go for locally farmed produce that is either free range or organic. Do not buy meat or vegetables in packets apart from frozen vegetables, which are a good option. If you would like a list of locally farmed produce then contact you local born2move trainer. If you are struggling to lose weight contact born2move. We will work with you to discover a weight loss programme that is best for you as an individual not a number.
Office: 08454503073
email: info@born2move.co.uk