Well it's hardly a shock now, is it? Lilly Allen is doing it. Posh spice is doing it. And we all know that Lindsay Lohan does it best of all! What is the latest trend in the world of celebrity diets? Why, it’s yo-yo dieting, of course!
The papers are full of incredible shrinking women - Nicole Kidman, Hilary Duff, Misha Barton, Renee Zellwegger…the list goes on. The stars change their body size as often as the rest of us change our clothes.
But maybe it’s not just celebs who are caught in the diet trap: You follow the latest diet book to the letter. You reach your target weight – congratulations! But then you come off your diet and the weight comes back on, with more besides.
If this sounds familiar, you too could be a yo-yo dieter.
Yo-yo dieting is when we jump from one diet to another. You know them all, perhaps you’ve even tried them all – from the Cabbage Soup Diet to the Food Combining Diet, the Beverly Hills Diet to the Blood Type Diet - there is no end of diets to choose from when seeking a solution for getting rid of those extra pounds.
With half of the adult population in the UK and Ireland considered to be overweight, it's little wonder that we are constantly searching for the "magic bullet" to help us lose weight quickly and effortlessly. But can diets that promise such easy results really be effective?
Diets differ enormously in their messages; varying from the restriction of certain foods (or even practically all foods!), to the prescription of unlimited amounts of other foods. In common - they sound highly attractive promising easy, effortless and fast weight loss. Proof that wonder diets actually work is based on anecdotal findings and testimonials of short-term results. Importantly, these diets also depend on us changing our eating habits or lifestyle in such a way that really can’t be continued in the long term.
But how does this lead to weight gain? We have a motto that all diets work and no diets work. If you severely restrict the number of calories you consume, whether that is by only eating fruit before noon or never eating after 5pm, you will lose weight. But if you consider a diet to only last a set length of time, you’re setting yourself up for trouble.
The definition of ‘diet’ is: The usual food and drink of a person or animal.
During your weight loss diet, you might change your eating habits from your ‘usual’ choices. It’s quite likely that these changes are not the type of changes that you can maintain in the long term – can you really take 6 capsules of vinegar before every meal for ever more or never again eat white food and yellow food at the same meal?
If your ‘diet’ involves making changes that you cannot continue in the long-term or fit easily into your lifestyle, your weight loss diet has to come to an end at some time. This is when the yo-yo dieter goes back to the ‘usual’ diet that made them gain weight in the first place.
After coming off their ‘diet’, the yo-yo dieter will regain the weight they lost. But why do they gain more weight?
This is because of the effect of extreme diets on the metabolism. We all need a certain amount of energy to keep our bodies functioning – the lungs breathing, the heart pumping and the brain ticking over, for example. If we don’t take in enough energy to meet these needs, the body decides that it is being starved and tries to conserve energy. The metabolic rate decreases, energy is used more sparingly and the calories we do take in are stored more efficiently.
When the ‘diet’ is over, the yo-yo dieter goes back to their old eating habits but their body is still in starvation mode, hanging on to every calorie, storing up those calories better than ever and, ultimately, gaining weight.
The way to break this yo-yo dieting cycle is to look at the bigger picture of nutrition and health and look to the true definition of ‘diet’ – the USUAL food and drink.
It requires a little nutritional know-how to balance the foods you eat with the energy you use. But once you learn how to make healthier choices that fit in with your lifestyle, you can reach your target weight and you can keep that target weight.