How To Stop Yo-Yo Dieting | E23

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Hello, team, and welcome back to the podcast. This is Train Like a Girl. My name is Abby, and I am an online women's health and fitness coach. And today we are talking about yo-yo dieting, essentially. And I know you've probably all heard about that, but I want to delve into some of the dangers around that and how to stop it happening, how to lose the weight long term, lots of things really. But we're crucially talking about why repeating that same 5 to 15 kg, whatever it is, diet cycle is actually putting you in a worse spot long term. And it's making you look worse long term. I see it constantly, especially with women that have been dieting for years, which is quite common, let's face it, unfortunately. So here's how it goes: it's this cycle of losing the same five, 10, 15, maybe even 20 kilos over and over again over years. I'm not talking about just like a few weeks or whatever. I'm talking about the people that do this on repeat. And you know exactly what I mean if you've done it. You diet down using, typically, in my experience, low of working with people, low carb, low fat, um, low calories, um keto, whatever it is, you diet down, you get the results, you feel great for a little bit. And then life happens, and thing the rains start slipping a bit. You you end the diet at a time, you're like you go on holiday, the diet ends, or whatever it is, something gets in the way, things start to slip, you might be on and off it for a bit, and then eventually, a year into it, the weight comes back on. And sometimes, and then some. And then the temptation, then of course, is you look back with, oh, well, it worked before. So you know, a few months later, you're right back into that diet again or another diet, trying to lose that same weight again. So you're up, down, up, down, up, down, and most people think that the problem with that is that it's just annoying, they're just a bit like, oh, I've regained the weight, I'm gonna have to go back to the diet. You know, it's like that frustrated feeling, like you've never like, and it you're on this constant roller coaster, right? Like it's you're never really done. But the actual problem here is a lot more important than that, if I'm honest. And this isn't to scare you, because we'll later get into how we can mitigate this and how we can finally get off this bloody yo-yo. But when we zoom out over a few years of doing that, your body sadly isn't just going back and forth to the same place. Like, for example, let's say you started at, I don't know, I'll pick a number out of thin air. Let's say you started at 90 kgs and you went down to 75 and then you went back up to 90, and then back down to 75 and then back up to 90. That 90 over a few uh cycles of yo-yo dieting, that 90 kgs that you're now back at is actually not the same body composition as your 90 kgs five years earlier or whatever. So this is so when we zoom out, your body is not going back and forth to the same place. This is, and we're gonna get into what I mean by that. And I guess if we're looking at it just if we're kind of looking at it like simply, it's actually what's actually happening is you're changing what your body composition is made up of. So when you lose weight, when we all lose weight, sadly, we don't just lose fat, we also lose muscle. And that sadly is just part of dieting, even when you do things fairly well. Side note, crucial side note, if you're not lifting weights and you're not prioritizing protein, or and or you're doing quite aggressive diets where you lose the weight quite fast, that muscle loss can be significantly higher. So we lose it regardless. And also, caveat, we lose it through just aging. So if we're not lifting weights, so if we lose it, we lose muscle by aging, we accelerate that muscle loss through dieting, and we accelerate it further if we're not prioritizing protein, if we're doing an aggressive diet, and if we're not lifting weights, which I know sadly is true for so many women. So many women are caught in that trap of never really prioritizing muscle building, always just wanting to chase smaller. And this isn't me blaming the woman, by the way. This is cultural, this is deeply ingrained in our brains. Like, this is not your fault. This is just, I'm just giving you the facts so that we've got we're we can work together from here, right? I'm gonna give you how we can fix this. Um, but if you're not doing those things, your muscle loss and muscle waste is gonna be quite high. So let's say we've lost the weight really fast, we've not prioritized lifting weights, we've not done all the good things, and we've lost it quite fast. Muscle loss and fat loss will occur side by side. But, and here's what's really sad: when we when we then regain weight, our bodies don't just rebuild the muscle in the same way. So it's much, much easier to gain fat than it is to build muscle, to build muscle tissue. And in fact, the only way to build muscle tissue is through lifting weights. So take that out of the equation, and all we're doing when we yo-yo diet is we lose fat and muscle, and then when we regain, we just regain fat. If we do that on a cycle, you can see how if you're ending back at the same body weight every time you kind of like um come out of a diet if you if you rebound back up to a certain weight, unfortunately, you're kind of ending up in an even worse position because not only have you regained the weight, but you've lost muscle in that process, right? This is if we're kind of yo-yo dieting over years and years and years. So it's much much easier, as I said, to build fat than it is, uh to gain fat than it is to gain muscle. So what ends up happening over time is this cycle where you lose weight and some of and some of it's fat, some of it's muscle, and then when when the weight comes back on, a larger proportion of that is fat. And if you repeat that enough times, which a lot of people do without realizing it, you end up in a situation where your body weight hasn't changed much over the years, but your body composition has, and actually your body composition is worse. Less muscle, more body fat. And that's why so many women that I've worked with end up in this position where they're like, I weigh the same as I did years ago, but I don't look good anymore. I don't look toned anymore. And that is, you know, that that's not just in your head. That is what I would expect to see if if you've been dieting on and off for a long time without much resistance training. And that is the part I think, the resistance training piece. That is the piece that so many people miss because the focus is always just on getting smaller, losing weight, dropping kilos, fitting into smaller clothes, repeating that process again and again. But nobody really zooms out and asks, what am I actually losing every time I diet? Because if you're only focusing on scale weight and not doing anything to maintain or build muscle, you're not just changing your size, you're slowly changing your shape as well, right? And that's and it's not just about how we look either, right? It losing muscle is dangerous for us long term, for our long-term health. But if we're looking at it just purely from an aesthetic point of view, our body shape is gonna change, and typically not for the better, because muscle is actually what's gonna give the body shape, um, and you know, that kind of toned look that so many people are after. Um, and this is why resistance training matters so much. It's not just because it burns calories, because it doesn't, and if you want to know more about that, listen to my episode from last week, but because it is telling our body to retain muscle, it's telling our body to hold on to muscle. So we need to be doing that. We need to be strength training. So instead of this constant cycle of losing and regaining the same weight, what we actually want is to start changing what that weight is made up of, right? So more muscle, less fat. And that is exactly what I help my clients to do. We we help, I help to break that yo-yo cycle, stopping those extreme diets. And instead, we together build that person a routine and a potentially a diet. I would go on a moderate calorie deficit, keeping protein high, but following a really decent resistance training program that can be done from home or in the gym or whatever. It can be as little as two sessions a week, whatever, around that person's life. But crucially, we are strength training and we're prioritizing protein. And even if we are losing weight, we're doing it in a way that is that means that you'll keep that result long term and that you will jump off this yo-yo and actually build a body that you can keep for the long run, not just this fluctuating on off on off. So if you are interested in building a body that you love for the long run, instead of just going on this yo-yo time and again and ending up in a worse position, then please reach out. I will um pop some details in the show notes of how to work with me. I'll also pop my Instagram profile in there if you've got any questions. Please just drop me a line. Always here. But for now, that is everything from me. Please send this to a friend if you feel like it might help them if they're constantly somebody that's on a juice cleanse or a keto diet or whatever. And um, I'd love them to hear it. But that's everything, and I will speak to you again next week.