YO-YO DIETING: Effects on Rate of Loss

[ruby]

YO! Y'ALL! :roll: :roll: :roll:

I've read here and elsewhere, including Atkins about yo-yo dieting making it harder to lose. I'd like to know what constitutes yo-yo dieting? How does it affect rate of loss? And I'd like to know if, by definition, I'm a yo-yo? :roll: :roll: :roll: (My husband might agree.) In a nuthshell, here's my diet history: (and what would you make of this pattern?):

Age: 20-30's: 122-126 lbs

Age: 30: 146 lbs - followed two diets, Jane Fonda the carb queen!, and Nutri-System :eek: (remember? Foul!)
Went from 146 to 135.

Age: 34: 137 lbs. Made up my own starvation diet to get down to 122. By the end of it, I was eating cans of tuna. :p

Over the next 10 years fed up with diets, ate whatever I wanted, but oddly, read tons of diet and exercise books! ( :daze: Vicarious living indeed! During these years, I also became hypothyroid which probably contributed to some of this weight gain. Now treated.

Age: 34-44 slowly crept up to a peak of 169.
During that time plateaued at 157, then 162, peaking at 169, which prompted:

Age: 44: 169lbs. Atkins, went from 169-145. Went back to old way of eating. Regained all but 7 lbs.

Age: 45: 162 Atkins (Started currently, Jan. 2000) with goal weight of 125. Finally realised I can't just eat whatever I put my hands on.

Does this make me a yo-yo dieter? Will it likely affect my diet? Have I ruined my metabolism. Is there some diet guru who knows these things? Thanks for any help,

Ruby :roll:

[Natrushka]

Hi Ruby. I'd say you qualify for 'yo-yo dieter' status.

As for permanently ruining your metabolism, that may be a little harsh. But you have messed it up. When you DIEt and severely restrict calories you put stress on your body - it goes into shut down / survival mode. Thinking that there is an impending famine around the corner, a stressed body holds onto its fat and its water - and it sacrifices lean muscle for fuel. Lean muscle is what burns fat and raises metabolism - when you lose muscle on a starvation diet your metabolism shuts down. As soon as you start eating a healthy number of calories you begin to put on fat - your metabolism is slower and your body sees this new source of food as something it must store and keep - for the next time food is in short supply. Yo-yo dieting is actually worse for you than just being overweight. After a starvation diet you tend to put the weight you lost back on, and then some - because you're not only gaining back the fat, you're replacing the muscle you lost with fat as well.

This time around you can expect things to take longer - it will take some time before your body trusts you enough to let go of that fat and water. Keep calories high - you should be eating at the very least 10 - 12 times your body weight a day in calories. Drink all the water recommended (64 oz + 8 oz for every 25 lbs overweight) and then drink more! And I would strongly suggest some resistance work with weights. Building lean muscle will only help you - you'll raise your metabolism and feel stronger.

HTH
Nat

[ruby]

Hi Nat,
Thanks for your reply. The muscle that I lost then is permanently lost, or I can build it back?

It's a little depressing to think I've screwed things up. And it worries me that if I rebound once again I'll only makes things that much worse. OOOOOHH!

Thanks for the insight.

Ruby. :)

[agonycat]

Ruby, you CAN re build the muscle back. Just realize your body will be more into storing food for fat stores than building muscle up because of it's past experiences of you dieting.

Be patient with it ;)

Give it the chance to trust you again and what you are wanting it to do. We have such a bad habit of abusing our bodies then getting mad because it responds differently than what we expected it to do.

Hang in there :)

[ruby]

Hi Agonycat,
Thanks, I needed some encouragement. Glad to hear I can rebuild it. I just feel like I have to be very careful from now on not to exacerbate fat storage. It makes me feel like "last chance at the Ok fat corral, or something. Oh well, if only I'd known.

THanks all of you,

Ruby :daze:

[alto]

Ruby, I'm sure you can get the muscle back. There have been studies on nursing home patients. People in their 60s, 70s and, I believe, even 80s gain muscle after exercising.

I've wondered a lot about metabolism too. "I have a slow metabolism" -- heredity? a medical condition? Or because I don't exercise and have a high percentage of body fat? I'm beginning to think it's the latter.

I'm not really a yo yo dieter, although I'm a constant dieter. (To me, yo-yos are those who have lost 50 pounds and gained 60 on successive occasions.)

I thought your dieting history was interesting. I've never written mine down in chart form. Here goes. I'm 5'8 and 53 years old.

Age 14, 146 -- pronounced fat by family.
High school -- probably 160
College -- between 155 and 170
Summer after college -- right up to 190; ate 2 doughnuts a day (but I also walked three miles a day, to and from work)
Age 23 -- Stillman, one week. Lost to 175. Gained it back immediately.

Age 26 -- 210. Lost 25 pounds in one month on a low carb, low fat diet. Painless. Down to 185. I maintained 185-190 for five years with no effort. Ate anything I wanted.

Age 32 -- changed jobs. Went right back to 210 (more cokes, less exercise)

Age 35 -- Weight Watchers, joined at 216. Lost very steadily, down to 188. Maintained for five years.

Age 40. Became vegetarian and quit full-time job. Gained 40 pounds in two years.

Age 42, 230. Went on doctor supervised not-quite-fast program. Down to 215, exhausted, stopped the program.

I stayed at 230 for four years when various stresses in my life, including financial, changed my lifestyle. I lived on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, hotdogs, bisquick with butter and jelly, and coke.

1995 -- 240
1996 -- 250
1997 -- 270
1998 -- 280
I've bounced between 270 and 280 for the past few years, off and on low carb, WW, but never on anything longer than a month, and never lost more than 10 pounds. I have done very little exercise of any kind in the past five years.
2001 -- 293!!!! ($~%^%#~)

I don't think I'd like to see this on a graph :)

[ruby]

Hi Alto, :wave:
No, you're definitely not a yo-yo :roll: I wouldn't say so. I'm not an expert by any means, but it seems to me you just steadily increased and didn't really do much dieting at all - which I think is actually a good place to start from. Better than what I've done. You haven't messed up your metabolism.

From your diet history, my hunch is you'd respond very well to any diet program you stuck with. If you look at age 26 and 35, you lost quite easily and, most impressively, you maintained it with little effort. That has not been the case for me, never longer than a few months.

Did you mention that you didn't stick with the diets for long? Did you lose interest? Did I get that right? Do you mean this WOE too?

I wonder if it becomes harder to get on the same old merry go round the more we do it. Maybe that's a demotivator. I certainly found it very hard to motivate myself to do Atkins this time. Especially Induction. I thought, gee whiz, do I have to go through all this again?! Now that I've done this twice, I really don't want to have to do it over. I'm not totally convinced I can keep it up either.

The other thing that struck me was you gained 40 lbs when you became a vegetarian. Well aha! I went through a phase from age 34 to 37, where I went from 134 to 160, and I was very much into Jane Brody and cooked everything in her book. Let me tell you, that was a very carby period. Jane Brody's Carbohydrate cookbook or something. Bet that's what happened to you. well well.

The thing I don't like right now, is that I have to do it for life. I've never quite faced that in previous attempts.

You say, I just ate whatever I wanted. I did that too.

Exercise? I've never done any in my life!

That's one thing I understand: resistance to exercise. I have a treadmill I use as a laundry rack. (See below about this resistance business.)

I don't know a lot about metabolism. You're not hypothyroid are you? Have you ever been tested? That can certainly affect things, as can age, hormones, certain medications. Atkins tells us in his revised book what some of those drugs are -- I think he mentions diuretics, and hormone therapy. Off the top of my head, when I look at your diet history, my hunch is you could lose quite easily, even more easily than me- - since your haven't really played havoc with your metabolism too much. Doesn't Atkins also suggest a fat fast to determine if metabolically resistant? Doesn't sound too appealing, or healthy, to me, eating all that fat. (The Inuit do it, I think)

My sister is 5' and weighs 250. She's ten years older and never dieted and is happy with her weight, which is also very evenly distributed, unlike my belly fat. She thinks my need to lose weight is silly. She can also be observant in a quiet sort of way, and after having spent two weeks with me she said to me one evening, "You know, you don't sleep enough. If you slept more you'd lose weight. You'd see. You wouldn't have a problem." (I don't sleep very much at night.)

Of course I thought this was rather simplistic, like an old wive's tale. Then, coincidentally, I started seeing all these articles on a connection between lack of sleep (and particularly, deep sleep) and the production of stress hormones, cortisol I believe. Furthermore, they've found a direct link between this lack of sleep and accumulation of fat - abdominal fat. There's been a slew of articles about this. I'm starting on a new sleep regimen. (Also, the sleep has to occur at night, because circadian rythmns and all such stuff.)

In terms of exercise, this is something I've heard which appeals to me:

This Jungian analyst claims some people just aren't in their bodies much. They live in their heads. (i.e. a writer as opposed to a dancer is an extreme example). In particular, people with a resistance to being in their bodies (and people with addictions are not in their bodies much) must begin very slowly. And she doesn't mean walking, she means massage. Yes, very passive where you don't do anything at all, and someone else manipulates you so that you can bring full awareness to your body without having to think about anything. The idea being that you first must develop body awareness, and being a passive recipient allows this to occur. Well, I had a 90 minute massage, and when it was over I felt as though I had worked out. (I never exercise) I felt high, like I'd just exercised. I was truly stunned. And I realised I never pay attention to my body.

Yoga people all claim the same thing, that when you pay attention to the body, weight loss issues take care of themselves without diet. Because you are approaching it from the body, as opposed to from the mind - which is what we do when we diet -- we're still coming from our heads. If I look at my bookshelves and count the number of diet and exercise books it's clear to me that I approach my body from my mind as opposed to the other way around. I like to read. Mind over matter. I think there's a great deal of potential in these ideas, if I could just silence my mind long enough to go to a yoga class.

PS:
The Jungian analyst is Marion Woodman and she's written many wonderful books on women with eating disorders, which I don't have, but I stumbled across these books when I was going through my Jungian phase. Some of her books are: The Pregnant Virgin, The Owl was a Baker's Daughter, among other titles. She is considered one of the foremost Jungian thinkers on women and body image. Have you heard of her?

Alto, thanks for being so encouraging with me. I just wish I could make more of this diet history. Yours looked very interesting too. I know there are better experts in this forum, and I'm only offering these ideas that I've stumbled across over the years, humbly. Perhaps some of them might help. Who knows? I'm still trying to figure it all out myself.

A famous screenwriter, William Goldman, once said "Nobody knows nuthin'" He was of course talking about what it takes to make a hit movie and the impossibility of finding a formula that works for everyone. Maybe dieting is like that too.

Thanks Alto, :wave: :roll:



Ruby :wave:

[alto]

Thanks very much for all those thoughts, Ruby. I do live in my head, definitely -- which means I"m very out of balance and would like to be more balanced. This isn't just from middle-age. I remember a boyfriend I had right after college saying, gently complaining, "You're 90 percent psychic energy and 10 percent physical energy." Another way of saying slow metabolism, but I don't think it's my metabolism's fault.

On the vegetarian diet -- it was license to eat bread and butter and honey six times a day! Add a little pasta primavera with lots of cheese and a couple of scoops of ice cream -- I'm sure the Dean Ornish kind of vegetarian would have had a different experience :)

On sticking to a diet, in my case for the past five years, I've been under such stress and with such a topsy turvy schedule, I simply didn't have the time-energy-focus to stick with it. As you've found, especially at the beginning, dieting is WORK. It's being conscious of every thing you put in your mouth. It's making choices every hour or so. I have faith that this will become second nature eventually :)

I've been sticking with this for nearly three months, which is long for me, especially when I'm not getting the results I expected. I thought I'd be down at least 30 if not 40 pounds in three months -- I expected to slow down when I got below 200 (haha), but not this high up the scale! I'm happy with this WOE now, although I keep having digestive problems and if I can't solve those, I'll have to try something else.

As for sticking with it, I think one has to find a program that one can live with for life. I've noticed that many of the most successful people here LIKE THE FOOD. I think it's very important -- Karen has suggested this -- to make a list of all the low carb things you do like -- Love, Like, Tolerate, maybe. And choose your food from those groups. If you HATE seafood or steak, forcing yourself to eat it will make you hate the WOE.

As for what happens in maintenance, I have two thoughts. First, I think ideally what we eat now should be what we eat in maintenance. No, we're never going to go back to eating pizza four times a week, ice cream every day, along with double cheeseburgers and fries and lots of soda. We shouldn't want to -- part of this process is learning about nutrition. That stuff kills.

BUT and on the other hand, at least in my past experience, I could eat some foods that are not on LC -- not a succession of junk food, but occasional treats. I've already found low-carb bread (7 or 8 grams a slice) and that's a help. But I'm not going to eat six slices of it a day, with butter!

Your sister's idea about sleep is as good one, I think. I'm trying to get enough sleep -- another thing I couldn't/didn't do for the past several years. I've read that it takes at least eight hours of continuous, night sleep for the body to release its water.

Back to metabolism, I believe a slow metabolism can be overcome. The simple fact that muscle takes up less space than fat -- and burns more calories -- is something that makes sense to me. The next part of my program is to focus on exercise. I had to get the eating down.

Good luck -- I'll see you in your journal :)

[TX_Mama]

Great thread. I was impressed you could both recount your weights and diets through the years. It inspired me to write mine down. I didn't know if I could do it. I won't bore you with the details since it filled up 6 sheets of paper. I think I should change my name to Duncan on that fact alone.

It did make me realize over the years what worked and what didn't and for what reasons. Very theraputic.

Thank you!

[ola454]

I am also wondered about jo-jo effect.
I am trying to lose weight since 7 months. Six months I was on the low fat diet, doing a lot of training (60 min on the rolling machine everyday) and nothing happened. Since about one month I am on the low carb diet and even I gain 11 pounds!
My history weight:
- when I was 18 years old I weight - 101,2 pounds ( anorexia) my hight 65 inches
-when I was 22 years old I weight- 105,6 ( anorexia)
- when I was 25 -111.8 (bulimia)
-when I was 27 -105,6 (bulimia)
-now when I am 29 - 136,4 ( being healthy- no bulimia)
Since two years I am active. Since 7 months I am training even more - during all this time my body fat is 28,9 which is way too much!
I was wonder do I have jojo effect?