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Yo-yo Dieting

One of the resulting problems of people looking for quick fixes and ignoring the timeless advice of “eat less and exercise more” is a phenomenon called weight cycling or yo-yo dieting. You see, the body goes through an adaptive process when it is exposed to chronic long term dieting without exercise. This process is called “the starvation response,” and it’s how our ancestors adapted to chronic food shortages. In short, our body has a built in mechanism of lowering our metabolic rate (the amount of calories we burn daily) to cope with “starvation”.For example, prior to chronic dieting your body may have had a daily calorie need of 2000 calories per day to maintain your weight. However, after a few weeks on a severely reduced calorie “starvation diet” without regular exercise, your metabolic rate naturally falls. When you return to regular eating again (as most cannot follow a starvation type diet for too long) you may now have a daily metabolic rate of 1850 calories per day or a 150 calorie per day loss. This now translates into a weight gain of one pound every 24 days (3600 calories in excess = 1 pound weight gain) if you eat the way you ate prior to dieting.

The yo-yo diet cycle

The term “yo-yo dieting” comes from the process described above.

Here’s how it works:You start a quick weight loss program and don’t exercise, which results in a lowered metabolic rate (your body now burns less calories each day than it did before).Then you quit your diet.Now, you return to eating as much food (or more—because of a sense of deprivation) as you did before your diet.As a result, you gain weight gain beyond what you previously weighed due to your lowered metabolic rate (and/or because you are binging on previously “forbidden foods”).You become frustrated with your weight gain; you go back on a diet.Your metabolic rate lowers further; you regain lost pounds and add more weight in the process. And so the cycle continues….

What you should do 

Aerobic Exercise is essential for weight loss It's nothing new, but exercise is probably the most important predictor of whether you will succeed at long term weight loss and weight loss maintenance. In order for exercise to be helpful in weight loss, you should strive for a minimum of five 30 minute sessions per week.

The good news is that recent research has shown that three 10 minute sessions in a day are as good as one 30 minute session. This helps many in combating the no time for exercise excuse. Be certain to find something you enjoy. You'll be more apt to stick with it.

 Weight loss and weight training

There are  significant weight loss benefits attached to weight  training  in and of itself. The basic equation is this: the more muscle tissue you have, the more calories you will burn. This is why many world class athletes  must eat thousands of calories a day to maintain their weight. Muscle is active tissue, fat is not. Thus, muscle "burns" a significant number of calories each day for its own maintenance. 

Eat more often.

Whether you want to gain weight or lose it, more small meals are better than fewer large ones.For weight loss eating more small meals, mean you will store less fat. Your body can only assimilate and use a limited amount of calories at one time, the rest will be stored as fatThere is a theory that it doesn’t matter how many meals you eat if the total consumption of calories is the same.At first glance this makes sense; the calories you expend will still be the same regardless of how you consume them.However once fat cells are formed they tend be hard to get rid of, in fact you can never get rid of them, they just get smaller that’s why it’s easier to put on weight next time you over eat, the fat cells are already their just waiting to  fill up. 

Even if  one is trying to gain some muscle you will again assimilate and use a greater amount  of  the nutrients when eating more small meals. Remember eating to much protiren is an expensive way too get fat.