Dr. Eliana Violetti
- Psychologist
- Psychotherapist
- Cognitive behavioral psychotherapy
- Functional Coach
YO-YO EFFECT: a life spent between losing and gaining weight!
When a diet is perceived as a sacrifice and not as a lifestyle, this is the result and it will be easier to fall victim to the yo-yo effect.
A diet is not a punishment but a lifestyle.
Otherwise, as soon as the period of controlled eating ends, you will try to reward yourself by eating everything that has been denied up to that moment.
The secret to getting out of the vicious circle of the yo-yo effect is precisely to change your idea of "diet", which should not be considered a brief period of giving up and deprivation aimed at reaching the ideal weight, but a healthy eating style, to be learned and adopted forever. In fact, the etymology of "diet" means precisely this: a way of life.
Losing many pounds in a short time is possible, but the main problem is that if you stop the diet without learning a satisfying eating lifestyle suitable for your metabolism, you tend to regain all the lost pounds, plus a few more, causing the so-called yo-yo effect.
In other words, cyclically following very restrictive low-calorie diets, alternating them with periods of uncontrolled eating, leads your weight to go down and up.
It goes up and down, just like a yo-yo.
This process starts with a drastic diet that allows you to lose weight quickly but is not effective in the long term: the dieter then tries to lose the regained weight again and the cycle "diet, weight loss, weight regain" starts over.
The causes of such weight fluctuation can be various, but they often trace back to overly restrictive eating.
Yo-yo effect: the causes
At the origin of the yo-yo effect there is always a weight-loss diet that is too restrictive, followed by weight gain as soon as you go back to eating normally.
The causes can be of various kinds, physiological but also psychological.
Among the psychological causes of the yo-yo effect, the so-called "emotional eating" stands out: it leads to eating in an uncontrolled way not for nutritional needs but as a response to a negative emotion, for example:
- anger
- boredom
- sadness
Or as a reaction to the frustration tied to not reaching the ideal weight. Indeed, overly drastic diets are very hard to complete and are often interrupted before reaching the goal.
All of this triggers a sense of disappointment, ineffectiveness, loss of self-esteem; you feel frustrated and keep seeking comfort from food.
Yo-yo effect: the physical consequences
When you try to lose weight by following a too restrictive diet, the body slows down its activities to save energy. In practice it enters "famine" mode, that is, it tends to preserve fat reserves and burn less. This has negative effects on metabolism, which after a very unbalanced diet slows down. Furthermore, it leads to quickly regaining weight once you return to a normal-calorie diet and makes losing weight increasingly difficult also in the future. The moment you start dieting again to lose the accumulated pounds, the body will not respond.
The yo-yo effect has negative consequences on the body. First of all, it is stress for metabolism, which due to weight fluctuations goes haywire, making it difficult to return to your ideal weight after this seesaw of drastic and normal-calorie diets.
But the yo-yo effect also produces damage to cardiovascular health: a study conducted by a team of researchers at Columbia University in New York on almost 500 women showed that constant weight fluctuations could be harmful to heart health.
Yo-yo effect: the psychological consequences
The inability to reach or maintain ideal weight triggers:
- anxiety
- anger
- a sense of helplessness
- a negative impact on self-esteem
In addition, it can also lead to true depressive states or open the door to eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia.
Yo-yo effect: how to avoid it
It is important to understand, comprehend and fight the reasons why you gain weight: if you don't work on these reasons, after your diet these problems will return and make you gain weight again. The hardest part will always be working on your emotions. Also do not forget that there is no "diet period": there is a lifestyle of healthy and proper eating.
Yo-yo effect: how to fight it
Often food sacrifices are motivated by the desire to lose weight quickly. People are convinced that by eating little, eliminating some foods or skipping meals they will lose weight faster. Instead, the truth is that sacrifice easily leads to dropping the diet and throwing yourself onto food with even more frenzy. Binges and weight gain, doing this, are right around the corner.
It is much better to lose weight even quickly but based on the characteristics of your metabolism and your personal reaction to various foods. This will lead us, without too many sacrifices, to our ideal weight and will allow us to maintain it without effort and without new weight surges.
To fight the yo-yo effect it is also important to act both on nutritional choices and on the psychological causes that can trigger it.
You need both to review your eating habits and your idea of "diet", and to change your approach to food, in order to give it back its proper role: that of nourishment and not of an emotional outlet.
