Losing weight is easy, but keeping it off is harder. Everybody loses weight, if they are paying attention to it. However, it’s the long-term sustainable weight loss that is the key to health. You should avoid the yo-yo diet and practice seven real strategies for long-term weight loss.
Nearly every research study on dietary intervention demonstrates that even the placebo groups lose weight, likely from something called the Hawthorne effect, where bringing attention to something causes it to temporarily change behavior. This also explains why nearly every weight loss dietary intervention shows weight regain within two years. We have an internal set point that causes us to return to a perceived correct weight, based upon hormonal signaling from our fat cells. This constant hormonal signaling overwhelms any willpower that we might display in the short term. Using our own hormonal system to our benefit, instead of fighting with it, is the only way to maintain long-term weight health.What’s wrong with regaining weight if taking it off again is possible (the yo-yo diet effect)? Most diets succeed in the short term but fail in the long term. In fact, over 95% of patients, after a dieting cycle and then refeeding, are heavier than they started. This is called yo-yo dieting. Calorie restriction and deprivation lead to a yo-yo dieting effect, with refeeding resulting in supernormal weight gain, even without binge eating. In a rat study, repetitive dieting cycles documented that second-time weight loss velocity was 50% slower on same calories and regain was nearly 300% faster.
Under normal circumstances, fat cell size increases and decreases, but the number of cells remains static. In a dietary restriction model, after refeeding occurs with rapid regain of weight, progenitor fat cells differentiate increasing the number of adipocytes by approximately 50%. Ad libitum feeding does not reduce until the adipocyte size returns to its pre-dieting size, but now there are more adipocytes, so total mass increases, resulting in an overshooting of the pre-dieting fat mass.
Sometimes this pattern of yo-yo dieting is externally forced, such as in low-income families where food-insecurity leads to cycles of food deprivation and overeating. Those who are eating less or skipping meals to stretch food budgets may overeat when food becomes available, resulting in chronic ups and downs in food intake that can contribute to weight gain, a forced type of yo-yo dieting. Paradoxically, even though the global calorie consumption is less, the patient is gaining weight.
(Bruening et al., 2012; Dammann & Smith, 2010; Olson et al., 2007).
Yo-yo dieting not only affects the total fat mass, but also affects the net muscle mass, or the fat: muscle ratio. With the initial cycle of dieting, the fat: muscle loss ratio is 70:30, but with refeeding and return of mass, the ratio of regained fat: muscle ratio is 90:10. When regain of weight occurs, it is preferentially fat, and muscle does not return. Muscle mass is one of the primary determinants of organism health and likelihood of longevity. Your muscle is your organ of longevity, and you should guard it with your life.
Nearly every research study on dietary intervention demonstrates that even the placebo groups lose weight, likely from something called the Hawthorne effect, where bringing attention to something causes it to temporarily change behavior. This also explains why nearly every weight loss dietary intervention shows weight regain within two years. We have an internal set point that causes us to return to a perceived correct weight, based upon hormonal signaling from our fat cells. This constant hormonal signaling overwhelms any willpower that we might display in the short term. Using our own hormonal system to our benefit, instead of fighting with it, is the only way to maintain long-term weight health.
What’s wrong with regaining weight if taking it off again is possible (the yo-yo diet effect)? Most diets succeed in the short term but fail in the long term. In fact, over 95% of patients, after a dieting cycle and then refeeding, are heavier than they started. This is called yo-yo dieting. Calorie restriction and deprivation lead to a yo-yo dieting effect, with refeeding resulting in supernormal weight gain, even without binge eating. In a rat study, repetitive dieting cycles documented that second-time weight loss velocity was 50% slower on same calories and regain was nearly 300% faster.
Under normal circumstances, fat cell size increases and decreases, but the number of cells remains static. In a dietary restriction model, after refeeding occurs with rapid regain of weight, progenitor fat cells differentiate increasing the number of adipocytes by approximately 50%. Ad libitum feeding does not reduce until the adipocyte size returns to its pre-dieting size, but now there are more adipocytes, so total mass increases, resulting in an overshooting of the pre-dieting fat mass.
Sometimes this pattern of yo-yo dieting is externally forced, such as in low-income families where food-insecurity leads to cycles of food deprivation and overeating. Those who are eating less or skipping meals to stretch food budgets may overeat when food becomes available, resulting in chronic ups and downs in food intake that can contribute to weight gain, a forced type of yo-yo dieting. Paradoxically, even though the global calorie consumption is less, the patient is gaining weight.
(Bruening et al., 2012; Dammann & Smith, 2010; Olson et al., 2007).
Yo-yo dieting not only affects the total fat mass, but also affects the net muscle mass, or the fat: muscle ratio. With the initial cycle of dieting, the fat: muscle loss ratio is 70:30, but with refeeding and return of mass, the ratio of regained fat: muscle ratio is 90:10. When regain of weight occurs, it is preferentially fat, and muscle does not return. Muscle mass is one of the primary determinants of organism health and likelihood of longevity. Your muscle is your organ of longevity, and you should guard it with your life.
Tags: hormonal signaling, Leptin hormone, Weight, Weight Loss