What is Yo-Yo Dieting and How to Prevent It?

You managed to lose weight after a lot of giving up and you are finally satisfied with your look.

Great!

However, you shouldn’t relax now if you want to maintain your ideal weight.

Unfortunately, that can sometimes be very hard.

You often end up having the so-called yo-yo dieting.

What is yo-yo dieting?

When you are on a diet you intake fewer calories and then your body spends those calories slowly and it stores them.

That happens until you are on a diet.

But, when you stop taking care what’s on the menu and you start eating more food (especially unhealthy) your body relaxes and you start gaining weight again.

Then you suffer from the yo-yo effect.

The more rigorous the diet is the bigger the yo-yo effect is.

What actually happens?

Your body defends itself from the drastic diet by slowing down your basal metabolism.

That’s the energy necessary for your organs’ normal functioning; the energy that helps us breathe and makes our heart beat.

Afterwards, your body starts an energy saving regime.

Also, your muscles decrease because your body spends more energy from the muscles than from the fat layers to secure energy for your organs.

In addition, your metabolism slows down as a response to your strict diet regime.

If you lose a significant number of pounds very fast your basal metabolism slows down 30%.

And that’s the issue with strict diets.

Instead of burning fat layers quickly, you lose muscles, the fat layers remain there and in the end, you re-gain pounds. (1)

But, there’s a solution.

So, how to prevent yo-yo effect?

Here you can see 5 ways how you can prevent yo-yo dieting.

1. Listen to your stomach

Being hungry between meals is more dangerous than greasy food and sweets.

Hunger makes you eat more often between meals and it affects your diet habits badly.

That’s why you should stick to your diet schedule and don’t skip meals.

You should try eating fruit instead of junk food between meals.

Furthermore, in most cases, you are not even that hungry.

You might be thirsty.

If you feel hungry between meals try drinking a glass of water and wait for a while.

Or, try drinking green tea instead.

2. Watch your diet

Divide your food in 4, 5, or even 6 meals.

If you divide the daily amount of food in 5 meals your metabolism will be much faster and you will slim down more effectively.

Many obese people make a mistake and have only 2 meals per day.

Also, there’s a rule not to eat 4 hours before sleeping.

If you adopted healthy habits during your diet, don’t throw them away easily after you finish your diet because you won’t accomplish anything like that.

You should always have healthy diet habits so that you can maintain your ideal weight with no problems.

So, continue eating salad as an entrée instead of creamy soups, and fruit instead of cakes for dessert.

In addition, be careful when buying food.

The declaration on the ingredients can protect you from unwanted calories.

Many healthy products are fake healthy foods and they are full of harmful additives.

3. Put away the scale

You lost weight.

After a while you still weigh yourself and you are closer to your unwanted weight.

You realize that and you feel a bit down and you reach for food and you end up overeating.

Your current weight doesn’t always mean you aren’t in a good shape.

Sportsmen are heavier than people who don’t do any exercise because muscles weigh more than fat tissue.

So put away the scales and don’t bother weighing yourself every day.

Control your weight by trying your favorite mini skirt.

4. Plan cheat days

Even you might be strong-willed, it’s difficult to give up unhealthy food for good.

You may feel weaker sooner or later and you may crave unhealthy food.

Well, to avoid that you should sometimes take a small portion of your favorite “off the list” food.

That’s less harmful than overeating during the holiday period when you want to eat everything that you are avoiding.

5. Be active

You won’t get good results if you are on a diet and you don’t increase your physical activity.

You should increase the energy spending after your diet if you want to keep your ideal weight.

Because you intake more calories after your diet, you should consider increasing physical activities, too.

You can run, jog, go to the gym, and try the plank, HIIT and CrossFit.

Also, you can spend calories by grass mowing, using the stairs rather than the elevator, or walking.

Walking is the most natural way of exercising.

Walk regularly and change the pace from time to time.

READ MORE: BEST SUPPLEMENTS FOR FAST WEIGHT LOSS!