21: Are You Making This Weight Loss MISTAKE? [ASK DR. ANNA]

If you have been losing and gaining the same weight for years, this episode is for you. In this episode of ASK DR. ANNA, Dr. Anna breaks down why yo-yo dieting is not just frustrating — it is physically damaging. And why each attempt can make the next one harder.

Dr. Anna shares Linda's story — a patient stuck in the yo-yo cycle for decades — and explains the real biology behind why this keeps happening. Then she breaks down how a Mediterranean-style system helped Linda lose 35 pounds in eight months and improve her A1C, blood pressure, and cholesterol for good.

Listen in to learn:

• Linda's pattern of losing 20 to 30 pounds and gaining back even more — and what finally changed
• How metabolism works as an energy processing system — and how it adapts to restriction in ways that work against you
• Why repeated crash dieting keeps your metabolism running slower for longer after every attempt
• How hunger hormones and neurotransmitters drive constant cravings that have nothing to do with discipline
• The cardiovascular stress that comes from weight cycling — and what the research says about the real health risks
• Why rapid weight loss eats away at muscle while fat-prioritized regain makes body composition worse over time
• Why each dieting attempt gets harder — including the role of immune-driven inflammation
• The critical difference between a temporary diet and a permanent weight loss system
• Why Mediterranean eating works as a sustainable long-term approach specifically for adults over 50

If this episode helped you understand what has really been happening to your body, send it to three people you know are also stuck in the yo-yo cycle. 

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Transcript

Why Crash Dieting Backfires

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, I'm Dr. Anna. I'm a medical doctor. I was trained in Italy, and I've helped thousands of adults over 50 lose weight, keep it off, and reverse chronic diseases using the fastest approach to permanent weight loss there is: simple Mediterranean strategies. Now you think you're trying to get healthier, but when you crash diet, you're actually wrecking your body. Now let me be clear about what yo-yo or crash dieting actually means. Have you ever lost weight on a diet only to gain it all back? Or have you done something like this? First you tried Weight Watchers, then you tried keto, then you tried low carb, then you tried calorie counting, and ultimately none of those things have stuck for you. And do you feel like you're constantly starting over when you're trying to lose weight? Yeah. If you said yes to any of the above, that is yo-yo dieting. Now, if you've even done this two or three times in your life, then you really need to hear what I'm about to tell you. I'm going to show you what's actually happening inside your body when you yo-yo or crash diet. And we're going to talk about why it's so dangerous and how you can fix it. And stick around till the end of this episode because I'm going to give you the number one thing that you need to do to stop this cycle for good. And if you want to protect your body for the next several decades of your life, you have to listen

Linda’s Decades Of Dieting

SPEAKER_00 1:15

to this. Now, I'd like to start by telling you about one of my patients. We're going to call her Linda. So, Linda, she came to me at age 62 and she told me, hey, Dr. Anna, I've been trying to lose weight, I don't know, maybe 20 plus years. I've done it all. I did the Weight Watchers multiple times. I've done keto twice. I've counted calories more times than I can remember. And every single time I've tried one of these things, I ended up losing weight and I felt really good. And I asked her, Well, what's the typical amount of weight you lost? And she said, anywhere in the ballpark from 20 to 30 pounds. But, and there was a but, she said she always gained it all back plus more weight. She was exhausted. She was obviously really frustrated, and she was scared. And I could understand why. Because now she didn't just have a weight issue. She had gotten into her 60s, and what else has crept up for her? High blood pressure, high cholesterol, and her previous doctor had told her that she was pre-diabetic. So she said, I feel like my body is starting to fail. And it's definitely punishing me for trying so hard. Now I obviously felt for Linda because this is such a conundrum. And I explained to her that I see this situation so frequently, especially in folks her age, which surprised her. She thought her experience was completely unique. But I said, Linda, your body's really not failing. It's kind of reacting exactly the way it was supposed to when you yo-yo dieted. And I said, if we don't fix the yo-yo dieting itself, this whole process is going to get worse. So the harsh truth was she was scared, but I had to have this upfront conversation with her, which left her feeling a little bit more scared. But let me now show you what's actually happening inside your body when you yo-yo diet, if this is how you feel too.

Metabolism Slows And Stays Slow

SPEAKER_00 3:05

So there are five types of damage that are happening when you tend to do these kinds of yo-yo or crash diets on off, on off in that pattern. And most people have no idea that this is happening. So let's just run through these one after another. Damage number one, your metabolism is actually slowing down. Now, first let me explain what metabolism actually is, because I think people hear this term and it's just a fancy word and it's not clear what that actually means. Our metabolism, in the way that I like to describe it, is the complex way our body processes energy, plain and simple. It is all that chemistry, all of the body science that goes into energy moving through the body. It's what helps us stay alive, helps us move our body, helps us think, helps us perform every function. It's what helps each and every organ of our body do its job, etc. Now, all the things your body does require energy, believe it or not, even sleeping. And your metabolism also controls how much fat you have on your body. And this is where the concept of metabolism has gotten a little bit famous. People think of it as the machine of our body that controls our fitness or our physique or our shape. Now, when I'm saying yo-yo dieting slows down your metabolism, this is what I actually mean. Every single time you go on a restrictive diet, your body starts to think, I'm starving. I need to hold on to energy. So what does it do? It slows down the rate of the metabolism. Your body essentially is learning to run on less food, kind of like a car that gets better gas mileage. Now, hearing that, that makes you think, that's a good thing, right? Wrong. Here's where our body does not function like a car. Now, when you start eating normally again after you finish doing your crash diet, what's going to happen? Well, unfortunately, you would want your metabolism to jump back up to meet the new higher amount of energy you're eating. But that's not really how it works. Unfortunately, your body does not speed back up. Once you've started that yo-yo dieting situation and your metabolism slowed down, it stays slow. So when you quit your diet and you start eating more calories, what happens? Slow metabolism plus higher calorie amount? Yeah, you gain weight faster than you even lost it. And every time you diet again and again and again and you take these breaks in between and go back to an unhealthy diet, your metabolism ultimately just kind of starts slowing down even more. So this is why people say, I used to be able to lose weight easily, but now nothing's working anymore. This is kind of how it goes. It's not that nothing works, it's that your metabolism has been responding to what you've done to it, and it's slowly gotten a little bit more damage after years of yo-yo dieting. But the good news is that damage is not permanent. And remember, stick around till the end of this video because I'm going to show you how to fix all of this. But let's run into the next types of

Hunger Hormones And Food Noise

SPEAKER_00 6:08

damage. So damage number two, your hunger hormones are permanently cranked up. This is honestly the worst part of it. Now, when you restrict food, your body releases hormones that make you hungry. Really, really hungry. And that's obviously because it says, hey, I need to get my energy back up. But here's the problem. If you do this in a crash dieting sense because maybe you want to lose weight, even after you stop dieting, the hormones stay high initially. And your body, it's like it's screaming at you to eat more all the time. And this is why people typically say, I'm always hungry. I can't stop thinking about food. It's like it's in my mind. I have all this food noise. So it's not really about a lack of discipline. It's kind of the way the chemistry has been set up in your body after you were crash dieting. It's your hormones, it's things called your neurotransmitters or the brain chemicals that are firing to send your body signals. And yeah, all this yo-yo and crash dieting is making it all worse. Now,

Heart Risk And Blood Sugar Swings

SPEAKER_00 7:07

damage number three is that you're actually damaging your heart and your blood sugar. This is actually the part most people don't know about because when they do something like lose weight, even if it's on a crash diet, typically what happens is they're congratulated for doing something good for their health. But unfortunately, if that weight loss is not sustained, ultimately this can damage certain organs of our body, which are really important. Now, every time you lose weight and gain it back, you're putting stress on your heart, your blood vessels. What happens is your blood pressure tends to go up and down, and your cholesterol also goes up and down. And what happens is well, your blood sugar goes up and down. Now, all of this back and forth signaling and back and forth levels of these things will ultimately damage our heart and our blood vessel system, otherwise known as the cardiovascular system. So here's what research shows us about this. Compared to people who stay at a stable weight, people who yo-yo diet tend to increase their risk for type 2 diabetes by 23%. Their risk of sleep apnea goes up by 28%. And their risk of fatty liver disease goes up by 28% as well. Plus, this is the kicker. This is the most important one of all, and the worst situation. Their risk of heart failure goes up by 54%. Listen to that again. By yo-yo or crash dieting, what the research tells us is that we are increasing our risk of heart failure by more than half from just crash dieting alone. That's not smoking, that's doing something that's trying to be good for your body. So the problem is if you do these things like crash diets and then quit and regain weight, you're not getting healthier. Unfortunately, and this is gonna be hard to hear, you're getting sicker. Now, real quick, if you're listening to this and you're thinking, I feel screwed because I've been yo-yo dieting for years, what Dr. Anne is describing right now fits my situation. How am I gonna stop this? Don't worry. I host a free webinar where you can learn the fastest approach to permanent weight loss so you can stop damaging your body, live your next decades fully and on your terms, and never have to start another diet again. You can register for that free webinar by clicking on the link in the description below this episode. Or if you're watching this from a screen right now, there's a QR code. You can grab your phone, scan that, and the link will pop up for you. Okay, we need to finish going over these damages. That was number three. Let's talk about damage number four.

Losing Muscle And Regaining Fat

SPEAKER_00 9:38

And this is where you're losing muscle and gaining fat. So when we're crash dieting, we end up losing weight being on a restrictive diet. And people feel really good when they see the number on the scale go down. What we know is that all types of weight loss cause loss of multiple types of tissue, not just fat, which is what we're trying to target, but also what we call lean tissue or muscle and sometimes even the tissue from organs themselves. Plus, we lose water weight. So the issue is that when we regain weight after we're done with our crash diet, what happens is that our body chemistry alters itself, unfortunately, to prioritize regaining fat as opposed to muscle. And what happens is we gain back more fat and we end up still having less muscle, which is horrendous for our metabolism and it's horrendous for our health overall. So every time we go on these crash diets, our body composition gets worse. Now, ending up with less muscle and more fat than when you started is kind of the worst possible scenario. Muscle is what protects our metabolism, it's also the thing that helps us burn fat. So it's what keeps us strong, it's what lets us move, travel, live independently. People are familiar with that stuff. But what happens is when you go on these crash diets, you're making your body weaker and not stronger. So we obviously want to avoid this. Okay, that was a scary one, but let's talk about our fifth type of damage, and this is damage number five. Crash dieting gets harder every single time you try again. So this is the worst part, and I say it's the worst part because of the following all the damage I just described to you and the other types of damage, slower metabolism, cranked up hunger hormones, a worse body composition, damage to our heart and our blood vessels. Every time we try to lose weight again, all of this is going to get worse, and thus this whole process of losing weight will get even harder for you. Now, the first diet you tried probably worked out for you pretty well. And that's mostly why you are likely incentivized to try a diet again. But what about the fifth time you went on a diet? It might have not worked well at all. Maybe zero pounds were lost. It's not because you got lazy or you started to suck at dieting, it's because your body has been damaged from all the ways we already talked about by just the fact of crash dieting so many times. Here's something recent research discovered that makes this even worse. I hate to break this to you, but when you yo-yo diet, your immune system actually changes. And this is some crazy science. It creates what scientists call an obesogenic immune memory. What does that mean? That's a scientific way of saying. In general, know that our immune system remembers things. That's how when you come in contact with a virus that you've been sick with before, your body can fight it pretty easily and you don't get as sick as you did the first time. It's also the whole way vaccines function is that we expose something to our immune system, our immune system remembers it, and then it avoids us getting sick from that if we ever contact it in the in the environment. So the immune system is actually responding to being fat in a similar way. This is pretty crazy. It makes our body more resistant to losing weight the next time when we try to lose it. So what's happening is it starts to cause this cascade or this whole system of more inflammation. And this stays with our body long term. So when we crash diet, it immediately revs up our immune system to cause lots of inflammation, blocking our body from losing weight. That's insane. So the more you crash diet, ultimately the harder it's going to get for you to lose weight. I hope I've made that abundantly clear because there's so many things in the science that keep telling us this. And unfortunately, it's not just temporary, but ultimately it might cause permanent damage if this is done excessively enough times. Now, if you keep doing this, it's obviously just going to keep getting worse for you. So I'm hoping you're realizing at this point I have to just stop crash dieting.

Stop Dieting And Use A System

SPEAKER_00 13:37

So here's the question: not should I keep doing this? It's obvious you should not. Instead, how do you fix it? What if you've already dealt with some damage in your body? The answer is really simple. We obviously need to stop dieting. Instead, what should we do to lose weight? Well, it's using a smart system. Now, reminder that I host a free webinar, but what is this webinar really teaching you? It's not how to do another diet. It's instead how to apply a system that will last for the long term, which is the only way you can protect your body while still losing weight. It is the fastest way to permanent weight loss, and it is why I say that. You'll learn how to stop yo-yo dieting, protect your metabolism, and lose weight in a way that actually supports your body instead of wrecking it. Pretty ideal, right? So again, if you want to join me on that free webinar, and again, it's totally free. Link is in the description below this episode, or the QR code is here on screen. You can scan your phone if you're watching from a TV. So I'd now like to explain to you what I mean by a system, because I realize that most people are not familiar with this smarter way to lose weight, and often it requires a little bit of explanation. So let's just lay this all out on the table. Diets are temporary by definition. When people are dieting, they usually are doing something they do not plan to do for the rest of their whole life. So usually they have a start date and an end date. And when they end, what happens? They go back to their old habits. That's often why weight regain happens. But a system is the whole way of trying to do things completely differently. A system is permanent. It is instead a way of eating and living that you can sustain forever. So instead of going on a diet and then quitting it eventually, you never quit a system because you keep doing it. There's no start date, there's no end date, you just start living your life this way. Now, here's what research shows. When you lose weight gradually using a system like this, your metabolism stays stronger. You end up with a lower body fat percentage ultimately, meaning what? The whole thing we're trying to do is lose fat, right? So you lose more fat relative to your total weight. Now, when you lose weight really fast on a crash diet, your metabolism crashes harder. We've talked about that throughout this whole video. And the rapid approach, in and of itself, tends to damage our metabolism more. So the fast diets, they tend to wreck our metabolism and make it harder to keep the weight off long term.

Mediterranean Eating For Permanent Loss

SPEAKER_00 16:05

But a system, and the system that I like to teach is the Mediterranean system, it is gradual. It is steady weight loss that protects your metabolism and keeps the weight off permanently. Now, before I go any further, I'm just gonna throw this out there. Yes, I know that there is research for any of you who are science buffs that has shown that losing weight at a two different speeds doesn't really matter ultimately. Whether you lose weight fast or you lose weight slowly, if you keep the weight off, it's ultimately still beneficial. I'm not talking about that. I'm instead talking about fast weight loss done on a crash diet that then the diet is not sustained. If you stop doing the diet, you will regain the weight. And now I'm talking about losing weight slowly to keep it off because you're doing things that you keep doing. So I just had to throw that out there. Now, that is why I also say that ultimately a system applied well is the fastest approach to permanent weight loss because you never have to start over again. And that's what the Mediterranean approach is really about. It is not a diet, it is a system. You eat real whole foods, you build balanced meals, the meals are delicious. You enjoy applying these principles wherever you go to restaurants, celebrations, vacations, whether you're at somebody's wedding or you're at the office, you do it for the rest of your life and you don't have to try hard. It just becomes really seamless for you. So it's not something you do just for 30 days, and it's not until you hit a goal weight, you do it forever. And when you do that, your body stops fighting you, your metabolism will start to heal, your hunger hormones calm down, your body composition improves. And I can tell you from the folks that I work with, from patients and online clients, the number one thing that I hear from people, regardless of how much weight they lose, is that the food noise goes away. So, what's cool is you lose weight permanently, but you have so many other health benefits too. Now, remember Linda that we talked about earlier in this

Linda’s Results And Health Wins

SPEAKER_00 18:04

video? Let me tell you what happened with her. So when Linda had come to me, remember, she had yo-yo dieted for decades, more than 20 years. Her metabolism had slowed way down, her hunger was out of control, and she had all of these health consequences. She had not only gained the weight, she was pre-diabetic, she had high cholesterol, high blood pressure, the whole works. So all we did was we stopped the yo-yo dieting cycle for good, and we built a system that she could follow for all of her days ahead. And here's what happened to her. She ended up losing 35 pounds in eight months, but more importantly, the weight stayed off. Her blood sugar ended up normalizing. I saw her A1C drop. That was really cool. And her blood pressure even came down a little bit. We were able to reduce the dose of one of her medications. Also, her cholesterol started to normalize. She was just as shocked as I was because she told me for the first time in 20 years, I'm not thinking about my next diet. I'm just kind of doing this. I can't believe it. And I said, Yeah, Linda, you're doing it because you're enjoying it. Because it's not a diet at all. That's the difference between a diet and a system. Now, this approach, stopping yo-yo dieting and using a permanent system, is exactly what I teach in my free Mediterranean weight loss webinar. You will learn how to eat in a way that supports your body, how to stop all the damage, and how to lose weight without ever having to start over again. The link to joint is in the description below, and the webinar is totally free. So let's recap for a second before we move forward. If you've been yo-yo or crash dieting, you're not just failing to lose weight. Unfortunately, you're actively damaging your body. Your metabolism is slowing down, your hunger hormones are cranked way up, you're increasing your risk of diabetes by again 23%, fatty liver by 28%, sleep apnea by 28%, and ultimately heart failure by 54%. You are losing muscle and gaining fat. Your immune system is creating an obesogenic memory that makes it harder every time, and it's getting worse, not better. But remember the good news. You can stop all of this. You can fix the damage, and you can lose weight permanently with a brand new approach that is a weight loss system. You just need to stop dieting and start using the system for good.

Share The Message And Comment

SPEAKER_00 20:20

So here's what I want you to do right now. If this episode has been helping you understand what has been happening to your body and why you feel like things are not working for you anymore after you've been yo-yo dieting for decades, please send this episode to at least three people that you know are also stuck in the yo-yo cycle. Maybe it's a friend, a family member, a coworker, because you could be the reason they finally start to get well. And then when you're ready, drop a comment below of how many times you've yo-yo dieted in your life. I promise you you're not alone. Almost everybody has been in these shoes. I deal with patients all day long who are telling me the same stories over and over again. And I want to hear from you. And then when you're ready to keep learning about how to apply systems that work for your body instead of against them, jump into my next episode up here. You're gonna love it, and I'll see you in there.