YO YO DIETING

You lose a large amount of weight successfully and normally very quickly but you then regain the weight! WHY?

Well, in a nutshell, this usually occurs because the diet was too restrictive and was unable to be sustained leading to you returning to old eating habits and regaining the weight you lost. In a lot of cases, this can also end up with you being heavier than you were initially.

But what is the actual process behind all this? Why does it happen?

This is the Diet Cycle:

1. Action stage – You start a new diet. You are super enthusiastic about it and tell everyone just how easy it is and how the weight is just falling off! Your super confident this is the answer to your weight problems!

2. Dietary Failure – The diet inevitably starts to fail, weight loss slows and you start to fall back into old habits.

3. Guilt – Everybody is still asking how the diet is going and you feel bad because you were telling everybody how easy it was and now it’s gone wrong you would rather change the subject!

4. Depression – This ultimately leads to a degree of general negativity about the whole experience. Losing weight now becomes the last thing on your mind.

5. Lowered self-worth – At this point, you might start talking about your weight loss efforts like ‘I didn’t have the willpower’ or ‘It wasn’t the right diet for me’. You are associating the failure more as your fault than the diets!

6. You now start to engage in counterproductive behaviour; thoughts like: ‘binging on chocolate because it has caffeine and might boost your metabolism’; ‘maybe a few glasses of red wine because it has polyphenols in and aren’t they good for you?’ or ‘You don’t care about your weight because your happy and a little self-indulgence never hurt anybody?’

The final part of the loop can be triggered by anything…usually, you read about a new diet that seems to have all the answers and so the cycle starts again!

So, this whole process allows you to rationalise that fad diets are unlikely to work.

Does lifestyle change not seem like a more logical option?

Take a look at our programs to find one of our coaching packages that will work for your lifestyle.

Or try the FREE 5 Day Kickstart Challenge. 5 small tasks in 5 days to a healthier, happier YOU!