If you've been on a diet, you know the ups and downs. At first you're excited and motivated. You start to lose weight, but after awhile, the restrictive eating starts to wear off and you begin eating like you used to. The weight comes back and you start searching for a new diet.
Sick of dieting? Well, stop it then. Research shows most diets usually end in failure.
Researchers at UCLA recently looked at 31 diet studies and concluded that the majority of people who go on a diet end up putting back all of their weight. Two-thirds put back on even more weight. Why does this happen?
"When you diet, your metabolism slows down, or becomes more efficient, as a normal biological response," said Joy Musselman, registered dietitian at McKay-Dee Hospital. "Our bodies are designed to conserve energy when food is less available in an effort to sustain life in times of food scarcity. When we diet and severely restrict our food intake, our body responds by decreasing the amount of calories we burn."
There are thousands of diets out there, but Musselman said dieting is a poor method for losing weight long-term. Usually one goes on a diet as a short-term plan to lose weight, and often weight loss can be seen initially.
"However, once you revert back to the lifestyle habits that caused you to gain weight in the first place, the weight you lost while dieting returns and, typically, brings with it some additional weight. Many of us have a history of dieting to lose weight and then regaining weight and repeating this cycle over and over," she said. "However, each time we repeat the cycle, we are unable to lose as much weight as we did previously and we regain more than we ever have before. Each time we go through the dieting cycle, we impact our metabolism so that losing weight in the future is more and more difficult."
According to Dr. Pamela Peeke, a physician who regularly blogs on WebMD, dieting is stressful. That's because when you restrict calories, the stress hormone called cortisol increases. Not only does this cause anxiety, but it causes cravings as well.
Musselman agrees.
"Cravings are powerful motivators to eat, making it more difficult for us to resist food, particularly sweet, starchy, and salty foods," she said. "Imagine if someone told you that you could never have chocolate again. What would happen? For those of us that love chocolate, our cravings for chocolate would significantly increase."
Dieting works in the same way, Musselman said. That isn't to say that our cravings won't subside over time, but it does explain why we experience so many powerful cravings each time we start a diet or eliminate foods from our eating plan.
Dieting also makes you hungry. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine states that when obese people diet, their appetite hormones spike. Those hormones stay high up to a year after they've lost the weight. Researchers at the University of Melbourne who conducted the study, said the body rebels when it isn't eating enough, so the hormones tempt the person to eat.
It is possible to lose weight and still enjoy food of every kind, however.
The key, Musselman said, is moderation.
"Americans, in general, consume excessive amounts of fat, sugar, and salt. Becoming more moderate in our intake of sugary, salty, high-fat foods will help us to lose weight but still allow us to occasionally enjoy higher calorie, less nutritious foods," she said. "We also don't consume enough fruits and vegetables. Increasing our intake of produce can not only help us to lose weight but will also improve our overall health and well being."
In her blog, Peeke suggests ditching the diet mentality and start saying you are practicing healthy lifestyle habits instead. That way, you aren't obsessing about every pound and every morsel of food you ingest.
"An important part of healthy weight loss will be recognizing those times when we tend to eat for reasons other than hunger," Musselman said. "Food is very abundant and many times we eat because food is readily available and convenient rather than because we are truly hungry."
She said to think of the office candy jar as an example. You don't usually grab a piece or two of candy because you are hungry. You eat it because it's visible and convenient. Emotional eating is also a common cause of weight gain and must be addressed in order to successfully lose weight long-term.
"Food does not make a great coping mechanism for stress, anger, boredom, frustration, or loneliness," she said. "While weight loss is important, you should never compromise your overall health while trying to lose weight. Diets that encourage you to severely limit the variety of foods you consume are not healthy for you. For a weight loss plan to be effective long term, there must be an emphasis on making lasting lifestyle changes that include becoming more active as well as adhering to healthy eating principles."
Source:-http://e.standard.net/stories/2014/04/29/tired-dieting-stop-it-it-may-not-work
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