Key Message: Dieting not only increases your weight in the long term, it also messes with your hormones.

Action Point: If you want to lose weight in a healthy way, join me for my next Community Cleanse, kicking off August 23rd – http://www.emmascommunitycleanse.com.au/

belly tape measure

It’s common knowledge that being overweight is bad for our heath.

In fact, recent findings from leading health experts point towards a worrying trend.  One in five cancer deaths is caused by obesity, which is on track to overtake smoking as the main cause of cancer, according to international cancer specialists 1.

But with so many new fad diets and so much conflicting information about food out there, how do we know which diet is the best?

While restricting your food intake may seem like a quick way to shed kilos, think again. Experts say that dieting actually makes you fat in the long run.

Ditching the diet altogether might just be the way to go

The fact is that the vast majority of dieters eventually go back to their pre-diet weight or become heavier than they were before.

While many people seem to know that dieting doesn’t work in the long run, most are shocked to hear that the process of dieting itself actually increases your body’s propensity to gain weight.

In a previous blog post I wrote about the dangers of weight cycling and how skipping meals actually increases abdominal fat.

There is plenty of evidence to back up the claim that quick-fix approaches to weight loss will never solve the problem and are in fact more likely to make you fatter.

A 2011 study on more than 2000 sets of twins from Finland found that not only is dieting (independent of genetics) significantly associated with accelerated weight gain, it also increases the risk of becoming overweight 2.

The study found that dieting twins who embarked on just one intentional weight-loss episode were nearly two to three times more likely to become overweight, compared to their non-dieting twin counterpart.  Furthermore, the risk of becoming overweight increased in a dose-dependent manner with each dieting episode.

So how does dieting make us fat?

For years, obesity studies have found that soon after overweight people lost weight, their metabolism slowed and they experienced hormonal changes that increased their appetites. Scientists hypothesised that these biological changes could explain why most obese dieters quickly gained back much of what they had so painfully lost.

And the results have been demonstrated to be long lasting. An Australian study in 2011 showed that hormone levels had still not normalised a full year after its subjects’ diets had ended. “Leptin [a hormone that regulates appetite] falls and ghrelin [a hormone that stimulates appetite] rises after weight loss,” says its author, Joseph Proietto 3.

Along with biology, psychology also plays a role in diet-related weight gain. According to author of Secrets from the Eating Lab, Traci Mann, our brains are hardwired to want food for survival, so restricting calories creates a psychological stress response, which facilitates weight gain, not loss 4.

So what is the key to weight loss? My advice is to give up formal diets in favour of eating healthy and wholesome foods. To reach and maintain a reasonable body weight, you need a balanced diet full of nutrients to prevent disease and to ensure optimal energy and psychological wellbeing.

Australia’s new Healthy Eating Pyramid is a handy visual tool aimed at making how to choose the right foods in the right amounts easy.

For more tips on how to lose weight, read my blog post Weight Loss Tips Backed By Science.

 

References

  1. Smyth, C (2015) Obesity fuels cancer deaths. In The Times Health News. Accessed online May 30 at http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/health/news/article4455706.ece
  2. Pietiläinen, K H et al. (2011). Does dieting make you fat? A twin study. International Journal of Obesity, doi:10.1038/ijo.2011.160
  3. Sumithran P, Prendergast, L et al (2011) Long-Term Persistence of Hormonal Adaptations to Weight Loss. N Engl J Med 2011; 365:1597-1604 doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa1105816
  4. Mann, T (2015) Secrets from the Eating Lab: The Science of Weight Loss, the Myth of Willpower, and Why You Should Never Diet Again. HarperCollins:NY

Kat Boehringer 
Freelance journalist and editor 

Kat Boehringer specialises in health communications including health writing, health promotions, and social media management. In her spare time she works as a massage therapist and aspiring novelist. Connect with her at LinkedIn.

 

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