Bad Diet, yo-yo Diet

 

Diets and weight loss seem to interest a great many people. Estimates put about 39 percent of the men and 36 percent of the women of both Canada and the United States at weight levels that exceed those considered healthy. And with the growing understanding that excess weight is a risk factor that may lead to heart disease, about 50 percent of American women and 25 percent of the men are trying to stay on a weight loss diet at any given time. The problem is not with the dieting, but the fact once the weight has been lost, all the good habits are quickly abandoned, and the pounds return to plague us once again. It is this constantly changing weight, the ups and downs, that are considered to be more harmful than merely carrying around those excess pounds on a regular basis.

 

Why are yo-yo diets so dangerous?

Although this situation has been studied before with conflicting conclusions, the most recent report concerned individuals in the ongoing Framingham Heart Study. Using the initial recorded weights and those found at each of the first eight reexaminations (performed at 2 year intervals), investigators found that variations in weight were associated with heart disease and death from heart disease to a significant extent.

That means that the concept of "diet" should be changed to one of healthy "life styles" so that once you have achieved your weight loss goals, you continue to eat and live in a manner that keeps the pounds off. That is truly the healthiest strategy, and probably demands that we study why so many people go back to their old ways after struggling to achieve success. It certainly doesn't mean that we give up on solving the problem of obesity, but that we do something about teaching people to stay thin.