HEALTH & FAMILY

LOSING AND THEN REGAINING WEIGHT IS NOT ONLY FRUSTRATING, IT’S BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH TOO

You work hard to lose weight and are delighted when you drop a few kilos. But then before you realise it, that weight has crept back on, so you restrict what you eat to lose those pesky kilos again.

Getting stuck in a pattern of losing and gaining weight is known as yo-yo dieting. It can be bad for your health, especially if you go on an extreme diet to try to shed the kilos. Here’s what it can do to your body.

YOU’RE LIKELY TO GAIN MORE WEIGHT OVER TIME

When you lose fat through dieting, your levels of the hormone leptin also decrease. Leptin normally helps you to feel full and tells your body to eat less, so if your levels drop, you are likely to feel hungry.

When you do eat, having less leptin prompts your body to store calories, rather than burn them. Researchers believe the depletion in leptin is one of the reasons why people who embark on short-term diets regain between 30 and 65% of the weight they lose within a year. One in three dieters ends up heavier than they were before they started.

Going on a diet that severely restricts calories also leads to increased amounts of the stress hormone cortisol. It tries to get you to eat more calories, so you can end up with a raging appetite and undo the weight loss you have achieved.

YOU MAY END UP WITH MORE BODY FAT AND LESS MUSCLE

In some studies, it has been shown that yo-yo dieting results in increased body fat. This is because during the weight-gain phase of yo-yo dieting, fat is regained more easily than muscle mass.

YOU COULD INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF HEART DISEASE

Gaining and losing weight has been linked with coronary artery disease, a condition in which the arteries that supply blood to the heart become narrow. The more weight gained and lost, the greater that risk is.

A review of several studies concluded that large variations in how much you weigh over

time can double the odds of dying from heart disease.

YOUR BLOOD PRESSURE MIGHT SOAR

High blood pressure is another risk factor for heart disease, as well as stroke, and unfortunately rebounding weight can cause it to rise. A study of 66 adults found that those with a history of yo-yo dieting noticed less improvement in blood pressure when they lost weight than those whose weight hadn’t fluctuated over the years.

YOU MAY DEVELOP A FATTY LIVER

Fatty liver results when the body stores excess fat inside the liver. Every time you gain weight, you increase your risk of this happening. One study carried out on mice found that several cycles of weight gain and weight loss caused fatty liver. Fatty liver is associated with changes in the way the liver processes fats and sugars, which increases the risk of type 2 diabetes. Yo-yo dieting may exacerbate bone loss suffered by postmenopausal women. Studies have found that women who regain weight after losing it do not recover bone mineral they may have lost.