Yo-yo dieting: Is it good for you? Nutritionists answer

Yo-yo, the toy spins quickly upwards and downwards, staying genuine to neither and it’s fascinating to watch the spin but once the spin stops, it leaves your eyes in a whirl and similarly, yo-yo dieting is almost a bad word in current times, where the awareness of eating healthy and the knowledge that accompanies it is not uncommon but the human mind is such. It plays the devil, dispelling any attempt at logic when the urgent need to achieve a goal sets in.

In an interview with HT Lifestyle, Neha Patodia, Founder and Head Nutritionist of Nutrimend, explained, “Yo-yo dieting is a cycle of weight loss and weight gain, often caused by extreme dieting. It usually begins with food deprivation and restrictions to achieve unrealistic weight goals followed by a period of overeating. In the restrictive phase of yo yo dieting, extreme diets are followed for immediate weight loss. The second phase of yo yo dieting involves overeating due to the unsustainable food restrictions imposed during the first phase. The food deprivations often lead to uncontrollable cravings and acts of binge eating out of frustration.”

According to Rittika Agarwal, Nutritionist, Health Coach and Founder of The Mint Enfold, “Yo-yo dieting is bad for us as it puts us in this vicious cycle where we end up more frustrated with all the dieting only to gain all the weight back again. It slows down our metabolism, our hormones go all out of whack and the inflammation goes up too. Putting us at a risk for further weight gain which in turn can lead to numerous illnesses and it’s not just physical health, our mental and emotional health also suffers and quite naturally.”

Anupama Menon, Nutritionist, Health Coach and Director of Right Living, said, “Fad diets and crash diets are alluring – promising instant outcomes just like instant noodles. Both are devoid of course of any long-term health. Both, in fact, promise long-term disadvantages but do such diets give good results? Yes, they do, they give you weight loss results initially but remember one golden rule – what you do to lose weight is a minimum of 70% of what you’ll have to do to keep the weight off. When you lose weight suddenly, you do lose muscle, tomorrow when you gain the weight back, it doesn’t come back unfortunately as the lost muscle, it comes back as fat. What Yo-Yo dieting does for you is to see life only until 20 metres far and not bother about the roadblocks ahead or how to mitigate them. And now it’s in your hands to decide which hands you want to place your health in.”