Dieting Cycle causes stress and anxiety

Sept. 20, 2010 - PRLog -- The first question to be asked is; does dieting work? Let’s define “Dieting” According to Wikipedia dieting is; Dieting is the practice of ingesting food in a regulated fashion to achieve or maintain a controlled weight. In most cases dieting is used in combination with physical exercise to lose weight in those who are overweight or obese. Now that we what dieting is let also define what dieting isn’t? Dieting as most of us know it is a way to lose weight fast and regain that dress size that I had when I was 25, or possible a way to get into a dress in the next few weeks. I’ve even had primarily women contact me asking if I can make them lose 15-20 for their wedding day in 2 weeks. That is how most people perceive a diet or dieting. In fact this is why over 95% of the people I’ve talked to have been on so many diets in their life they can’t even remember which one they were on last or even if they lost weight. To make matters worse there are hundreds of diets out there. But they all make the same claim. You’ll lose weight. Think about this. With so many diets out there, why are we as a nation heavier and unhealthier than ever before?

So here are a few GOOD reasons to avoid the dieting cycle.
1. Research has shown that frequent dieting will cause you gain more than you previously lost before you started the last diet in the end leaving you heavier than when you started dieting. Here’s why; you start a diet most are restrictive calorie, carbohydrate, fat or some combination of these three. Your body says hay what’s happened I had all this food for energy and storage for a rainy day and now I don’t have enough to survive. People think by reducing or restricting their input of food they will lose weight, and they are correct. Here’s what happens. Your body is gone into self preservation mode. It sees the restriction as a famine and instead of starting to use the fat your body has saved it starts with lean muscle. Lean muscle is the best fuel for your body and it takes less energy to get it ready to consume. Now you start losing weight but its muscle not fat. By the way muscle weighs more than fat so you think you’re losing fat but all you’re really losing is you best way to lose fat, because muscle takes energy to do work but fat doesn’t. Now some time has passed and you’ve lost all the weight you had set out to lose or the event that you needed to lose weight for has passed and you return to eating the same amount you were before you started the diet. Now the problem starts. You’re giving your body those 2000 calories or so that you did before the diet and maintained your weight at (whatever it was) now your body needs fewer calories because it has less muscle mass to feed. Guess what it does with the extra, you’re correct it stories it for later. And the cycle will continue over and over and over again.
2. Now as if you really need another reason, how about this. New research shows that this same dieting cycle also stresses your brain, causing overeating and anxiety. Have you noticed that once you go off the diet your stress is reduced? When this occurs we normally eat comfort foods which helps use to feel better and then the cycle occurs again. This is in fact similar to addiction to drugs. Have you noted how irritable most people become when they are on a diet? Now you know why. It’s not just being hungry and missing eating it is actually an addiction. What is worse is if you go off the diet or cheat for a day or even one meal the symptoms return with more intense anxiety than before. And the cycle continues.

Conclusion: Stop dieting! Change your life style. Ask me how!

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If you're determined to get healthy, shed fat and gain muscle then get advice from someone that has been there. Spending 20 years in the military out performing his piers much younger than he. He has been in you 2 triathlons and 2 mini triathlons.