Lose weight without the yo-yo effect

December 13, 2021
Abnehmen ohne JoJo-Effekt
Published on  Updated on  

Lose weight without the yo-yo effect

3 tips on how to successfully prevent the yo-yo effect

Have you ever been on a diet and then found out that you can't keep your weight off for long afterwards?
Then you've probably made the acquaintance of the dreaded yo-yo effect.

But: Can the yo-yo effect be avoided? What can I do to keep it as low as possible or how can I avoid the yo-yo effect? The yo-yo effect - what exactly is it and what causes the yo-yo effect?

Here you get tips for a diet without the yo-yo effect and how you can avoid the yo-yo effect.

What is the yo-yo effect?

If you eat normally again after a diet, you will gain weight again in a short time and return to your starting weight, often even exceeding it. This is called the yo-yo effect. The yo-yo effect can appear especially after a crash diet. 

 

"The "ebb and flow" of weight is called the yo-yo effect.
Often you even reach a higher weight than the starting weight before the diet."

 

But you don't want to regain the pounds you often lost with great difficulty and keep your weight? Then stay away from crash diets and find out here how you can lose your weight evenly and then maintain it.

Causes of the yo-yo effect

if you your Calorie intake stark reduce, your body draws energy from your energy reserves. Your body not only breaks down carbohydrate and fat reserves, but also protein. This starvation metabolism represents an emergency program with which the body wants to ensure that it also survives during famines. This mechanism, which used to ensure our survival in the past, is rather impractical in times of abundance like today, because it makes it difficult to lose weight and can even lead to greater obesity.

Starvation diets result in less muscle

The degraded protein is mainly reflected in a loss of muscle mass noticeable. However, muscles are particularly important when it comes to losing weight, because they consume a lot of energy - even when at rest. through the Loss of muscle mass decreases the basal metabolic rate, i.e. the energy that you use when you are not moving and that your body needed to maintain its vital processes. It then works on the "low flame", so to speak. As a result, your body now needs less energy/food than before your diet. So in order to be able to maintain your weight after your diet, you would have to consume far fewer calories than before your diet.

But if you eat normally again after the diet phase or as much as before the diet, there is a high risk that you will quickly return to your starting weight or even gain weight beyond that. This is because your basal metabolic rate is still reduced. This is only slowly increasing again.  The muscles need time to grow back and to be replenished with protein.

Although the fat cells also shrink with a diet, they do not disappear. Since the body has learned from this "famine" and in order to prepare itself for another period of starvation, it strives to replenish the fat cells directly. A slight excess of the number of calories required by the body is sufficient for this, and the fat reserves, which we know, for example, as unloved belly fat, are quickly built up again.

 

With frequent strict diets, the basal metabolic rate no longer recovers completely. This makes it harder and harder to lose weight and the yo-yo effect is intensified.

 

“Starvation diets can lead to muscle loss. Thus, the calorie consumption of the basal metabolic rate also decreases.
Anyone who eats normally again afterwards uses fewer calories than before the diet and gains weight again more quickly."

 

Diet without the yo-yo effect - this is how you lose weight successfully

Tip 1 to avoid the yo-yo effect:

Slowly and continuously - instead of quickly and with a yo-yo effect

To avoid the yo-yo effect, reduce your weight slowly. In this way you can prevent the body from breaking down too much protein and the basal metabolic rate from falling too much.

Tip 2 to avoid the yo-yo effect:

Movement and sport

If you also exercise enough to lose weight or do sports, you prevent muscle mass from being lost.

Tip 3 to avoid the yo-yo effect:

Nutrition

Basically, you should also focus on sustainability when losing weight and change your diet in the long term. Stimulate your metabolism and reduce calories, because a negative energy balance is a prerequisite for weight loss. However, the calorie reduction should be a maximum of 500 kcal per day so that the metabolism is not reduced too much.
Better take your time to lose weight. It pays to be successful.

Published on  Updated on  

Leave a comment

Please note, comments need to be approved before they are published.