The Top 5 Ways That Yo-Yo Dieting Can Ruin Your Health

During the holidays most of us experience difficulty when it comes to sticking to our diets. You want to indulge in all of the goodies, going back for seconds sometimes even thirds which can really wreck havoc on our diet. To compensate many of us turn to crash dieting, or yo-yo dieting, which can in fact help us to lose weight but may cause other health issues in the process. Your are some of the worst effects of yo-y too dieting that many of us are unaware of.

1.You Gain More Weight in the Long Run

Studies have shown that over 33% of all people who use yo-yo diets and up gaining more weight than they lose in the long run. This was especially the case for women, who by and large gained more weight after words than their male counterparts. The reasoning for this has to do with the fact that we don’t only lose fat tissue when we yo-yo diet, but we lose other tissue such as muscle as well. The problem that this is that regaining that muscle tissue takes an extremely long time, and during this period you going to have greater distribution of fat tissue vs. muscle. This means that many bodily processes are going to be affected as a result, for example resting metabolic rate.

2.Reduced Skin Elasticity

Many of us were looking to lose weight are in doing so just because we’re health conscious, because we want to look good as well. Yo-yo diets can present a problem here because of the affect it has on our skin, as we gain more weight our skin stretches to compensate. On the flip side when we lose weight rapidly, we’re losing fatty tissue faster than the skin can adjust to. This leads to unsightly saggy skin, which in extreme cases can only be corrected through surgery.

3. Worsens Your Mood

Constantly cutting calories to lose weight like what is typically done in many types of yo-yo diets inevitably leads to burnout. These diets require an extreme reduction calories, which causes people to suffer from fatigue and even mood swings as a result. Not only is this type of diet not something that can be sustainable due to how unpleasant it is, many people don’t see any positive results from doing so after putting in all the work. This can take a psychological toll on someone for obvious reasons as no one wants to put in all that effort and see nothing become of it.

4. Can Cause Eating Disorders

After somebody as had enough of their yo-yo diet, they tend to binge eat. This is not only bad and the obvious in that binge eating results in more caloric consumption, but in that doing so can lead to eating disorders as well. And all comes down to how our body works, and it is designed to process a certain number of calories over a certain period of time. Binge eating foods high in sugar for example can do things like effect insulin resistance, which in turn can lead to diabetes down the line.

5. Can Harm Your Heart and Bones

Rapidly losing weight and then rapidly gaining weight back can be really harmful in many areas of our health. This includes the health of our skeletal system in the health of our cardiovascular system, which are heavily impacted by our diet. Many of us know the effects of binge eating on our heart, as eating foods high in saturated fats, trans fats and triglycerides are known to be harmful to our heart. Conversely depriving our heart of certain nutrients such as calcium for example during yo-yo dieting can have harmful effects as well. How are hard requires certain minerals in order for it to function, and if we are cutting back on what nutrients we are providing to the body it inevitably will not be able to do so. This takes a long time to happen as the body as other ways in which it can get these nutrients. One way in which it does so in the case of calcium for example is to leech the minerals from our bones which in time can do significant damage. This is especially the case in the elderly people and people who are susceptible to osteoporosis, as their but bones are already at risk.