Yo-Yo or Starvation Dieting

Diets that involve simply avoiding food altogether, known as starvation diets, don’t work. You need to eat nutritious foods to lose weight and keep it down. According to nutritionist Dawn James, M.S., R.D., Executive Director of Wenmat fitness facilities in Sacramento, California, trying this strategy will actually do more harm than good. She says:

Starvation dieting convinces your body that you’re living in a famine. Your metabolism slows down. Your fat cells become more efficient at storing fat to get you through the famine and you burn lean body mass-muscle protein­ for fuel. This means you have a smaller engine to burn calories and fat. You burn fewer calories for the same amount of effort.

Also, when you starve yourself you are more likely to get so hungry, you might binge. In fact, according to James, starvation diets have a 95­percent failure rate.

When people go on starvation diets and do not include exercise, they lose both fat and hard-earned muscle tissue. This loss of lean body mass from dieting results in a decreased resting metabolic rate, similar to when people lose lean body mass as they age. The lower metabolic rate makes it even harder to keep weight off after you end the starvation diet. Therefore, to maintain the lower weight, you must keep eating less food; otherwise, weight is usually regained, mostly as body fat. This cycle of weight loss and gain is called the yo-yo effect.

“Yo-yo” dieting is the tendency for people to lose and regain the same weight over and over again, rather than make any permanent changes in weight management. Some researchers believe that this can even be more detrimental to health than not dieting at all.

Healthy weight loss should occur at the rate of no more than one to two pounds per week. At this healthy rate, you are losing body fat rather than muscle tissue. You are also more likely to keep it off and avoid the yo-yo syndrome.

Strategies for Successful Weight Management

The bottom line when it comes to healthy weight management is that healthy lifestyle changes will help to bring your weight to a healthy level. Depending on how much excess fat you have, this process may take a longer time. However, any lifestyle changes you are able to make will improve your health and your feelings of well-being.
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