Why Do I Lose Weight, Then Gain It Right Back?

Hey people!  Darrin starting over coach is here, again, to talk about weight loss!  

A repeating and problematic trend we see as Personal Trainers is the yoyo diet.  People start the latest fad diet, lose weight, and then gain it right back, often more than they lost!  Those numbers on the scale go up and down because people don’t understand how calories affect the body.  Less is not always better.  If you don’t take in enough calories, particularly if you work out, your body is undernourished and goes into starvation mode.  When you’re “finished” with the diet plan and go back to taking in higher calories, your body retains everything it can get…and gains the weight back. 

People usually see weight loss two ways; what the scale says, or whether they can fit into their favorite pair of jeans.  Most weight loss programs, like Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig, will move the scale.  You will drop ten pounds in the short term because they give you a low calorie diet, from 500 to 1,000 calories a day.  Your body will make the short term adjustments, you may get on the scale and see ten pounds of weight (water-weight) loss.

Now let’s go for the big time and stay on the low calorie diet for 90 days to 6 weeks.  You have now lost everything; water weight, body fat, muscle density, and bone density.  So, you’re good, right?  You lost 20 pounds!  Job well done!  Your clothes fit better, people are noticing how good you look, and you can show off.  So what do we do?  We start to ease back into a normal eating lifestyle.  Let’s play it safe…I’ll just have a salad for lunch from Olive Garden (Garden-Fresh Salad, one serving with dressing is 350 calories + one 4oz glass of wine, an additional 91 calories = 441 calories) and, since you’ve been so good, as a treat you can have 1 breadstick 150 calories, which only totals out at  591 calories.  Now that you just ate 591 of your 1,000 calorie diet, there are only 409 left.  Oh the dilemma!  Now what do I eat?  Maybe I will have a yogurt and a piece of fruit for a snack.  That’s only 201 calories, now what can I do for dinner?  I have to feed my family…ok, I will eat light.  I will have ½ portions of baked/broiled/grilled chicken breast, broccoli, and rice.  That’s only 364 calories, so my total for the day (with no breakfast) is only 156 calories over my plan. So what do you do tomorrow…?  And the next day…?  And the next month…?

It is almost impossible to maintain a low calorie diet for several reasons:

1. It gets boring
2. If your body adapts to your low calorie diet you will stop losing weight
3. You do not get enough protein and your body breaks down too much muscle to compensate and gets weaker and weaker

Being healthy is a lifestyle, not a trend!