Why Yo-Yo Weight Loss Is a No-No

July 9, 2009 By Mark

Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.

Buffer
Tweet

This is a guest post by Kat Sanders

There’s something about the word diet that most people find abhorrent, because, whether we love to eat or not, the choices available are so many. And when you’re forced to restrict yourself because of this hated word, you want to ignore it as much as you can. But, if you’re considering weight loss and chalking out a plan to shed those excess pounds, you must factor in two dirty words into your strategy – diet and exercise.

Most of us start out weight loss programs with the best intentions – we’re in it to lose all the ugly fat and get fighting fit. Unfortunately, the human mind is a monkey, one that is easily distracted and lost. So it’s pretty easy to lose sight of your initial goal and get side tracked by other distractions, and this is why we end up with yo-yo dieting and exercising – the process where our weight goes down and comes up as we begin to diet and exercise and then drop them altogether. When this happens once too often, it hurts your body because:

It affects your immune system: According to a report in the Journal of the American Diabetic Association, scientists have found that yo-yo dieting over a period of time and the accompanying increase and decrease in weight can have a lasting negative effect on your immune system and leaves it weak. This means you are affected by diseases more often and for longer periods of time. Since one of the objectives of dieting and exercising is to become healthy, yo-yo diets defeat the very purpose of controlling what you eat.

It becomes a bad habit: When you see that you’re able to lose all the weight you’ve gained because of bad food habits and no working out with just a few months of dieting and exercising, you’re not going to take any diet and exercise program seriously at all. Your mind will keep telling you that it’s ok to do what you want, because you can always get back on track and lose all that weight you’re going to gain. This yo-yo exercise becomes a bad habit that you find hard to break.

Your health is affected: When you gain and lose weight continuously and within a short period of time, your body is affected adversely. You find yourself feeling fatigued and left with no energy. Your erratic food patterns also don’t make it any easier on your body, with your digestive system having to get used to different kinds of foods depending on your mood.

Any diet and exercise plan should be a way of life rather than a short or even long-term goal. So it’s best to start out with something that you find acceptable and comfortable doing all your life, on a daily basis, instead of going for broke and then failing before you’re off the starting block.

Author Bio

This article is written by Kat Sanders, who regularly blogs on the topic of x ray tech salary at her blog The X-Ray Vision-aries Blog. She welcomes your comments and questions at her email address: katsanders25@gmail.com.