Yo-yo dieting or weight cycling refers to the up and down cycle of losing weight followed by regaining that lost weight and usually a few extra pounds to boot. Unfortunately for many dieters this cycle repeats itself over and over again. New found determination and the next diet fad or diet in a pill typically initiates the next down cycle. The new programs dole out enticing successes but when old habits kick back in the weight comes back with a vengeance. Is it just a matter of will power and self control? Is there anything dieters can do to minimize the yo-yo rebound?
Let's look at some hypothetical's. If you weigh 220 pounds and carry 40 percent body fat you have around 132 pounds of lean body mass. This lean mass consists of bone, organs, and muscle. When it comes to things we can change, muscle is the factor we look at when we speak of lean mass. Let's say you find a new diet, add some aerobic exercise, and lose 40 pounds. This traditional method of losing weight loses almost as much muscle as fat. So now you are 180 pounds with 38 percent body fat. You've gone from being a large fat person to a smaller but still very fat person. The scary thing is you lost almost 20 pounds of muscle in the process. Muscle as lean mass is a major factor to how many calories you can consume in a resting state. This is called your base metabolic rate. Yo-yo dieting ruins your metabolism because you lose so much muscle with every yo-yo cycle. A simple way to approximate you base metabolic rate is to multiply your lean body mass times 12. This is how many calories you can consume without any activity and not gain any weight. Here are some formulas.
Lean body mass = Weight - (weight x body fat % expressed as decimal place)
Base metabolic rate = Lean body mass x 12
The actual formula is a little more complicated and you can find many BMR calculators on the internet but this is a close approximation.
So the secret to losing weight permanently and successfully is make sure you preserve as much muscle as possible while losing the weight gradually enough to not lose that precious muscle and to not reset other metabolism determining factors like your thyroid.
Whether you cut calories by a pill, with a high protein diet, the south beach diet, the Atkins diet, the low fat diet, the high fiber diet, the grapefruit diet, the vegetarian diet, or even more drastic measures like gastric by-pass surgery, you will probably yo-yo that weight right back on unless you engage in some form of resistance training. Keep the muscle friends and jump off the yo-yo dieting cycle.
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