14 DAY TRIAL // Just recently, television star Kirstie Alley publicly spoke on her yo-yoing weight, saying she had regained more pounds than she initially lost while a spokesperson for Jenny Craig. Oprah Winfrey is yet another celebrity to have had the same experience, which raises the question of how women without their financial possibilities should be able not to regain the weight lost. In this sense, experts are telling USA Today that this is one of the toughest obstacles to overcome – but it can still be done.
Nutritionists say most dieters can identify with Alley and Oprah because they too regained the weight they lost while on a diet, and then some in certain cases. Yo-yo dieting is like a loop from which the slimmer can hardly break free, mostly because the approach to weight loss is defective from the very start. Losing weight and keeping it off permanently should be seen as a process that takes place in time, and not as some kind of suicidal triathlon where either one succeeds or fails to never try again.
Still, few can explain why yo-yo dieters can so easily forget about their initial goals, up to the point of returning to square one in almost no time at all. “People do lose weight, but the majority regain some or all of their weight, whether it’s over one year, two years, three years or five. Regaining takes a toll on people emotionally. People often feel very ashamed, humiliated and powerless.” psychologist Thomas Wadden, director of the Center for Weight and Eating Disorders at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, says for the aforementioned publication as to how millions of people around the world yo-yo diet.
One of the possible causes could be found in that dieters often set too high goals for themselves in terms of weight loss: they want it to happen fast and they are willing to turn their life upside down entirely to get to where they want to be. The problem, Wadden says, is that, after a while, the body itself will ask for a return to what it knew as pre-diet normalcy and, naturally, the slimmer will slip back into the old routine without even being aware of it. This is why changes have to be gradual, while also including more aspects than just a change in terms of eating habits.
Losing weight must be seen like a job, something that needs a massive investment of time and effort in order to be one hundred percent successful, experts also recommend. It implies lifestyle changes that have to be integrated gradually, in as natural a manner as possible because, otherwise, the temptation to return to what we’ve known for so long as normal is too big to resist to.