[0:00]Today I want to explain why yo-yo dieting is such a disaster that it actually makes you fatter, makes it almost impossible to lose weight the longer you do it, and show you what you need to do to end this cycle and finally get the results you want.
[0:15]Hey, this is Colin Deway, if you want to master your metabolism, end the yo-yo dieting and finally get the results you're after. Start now by subscribing and click on that bell notification so you don't miss any updates. So if you clicked on this video, I have to make the assumption that you're a yo-yo dieter and this is something you struggle with in the past. And if I was a gambling man, I would bet that you've probably found it's been more difficult for you to lose weight each time you've gone back on a diet. And not only that, but you've probably gained most of if not all the weight back or more each time you've finished a diet. The reason this happens is because of the hormonal and metabolic adaptations that occurred when dieting, each time you diet, you're basically triggering this self-defense mechanism inside your body to protect itself against starvation. See, your body doesn't care about losing weight, getting a six-pack or any of that stuff, it just cares about surviving and if it thinks there's a lack of energy supply, which is the calories you give it. It's going to grow through different processes to make sure it does what it can to hang on to what little you give it. So when you do diet, especially when you do it aggressively on super low calories, doing tons of cardio, there's a lot of suppressions that happen to your hormones and metabolism. And honestly, this is why I think the first time someone ever diets is almost kind of a trap, because the first time you diet is going to be the easiest weight loss you'll ever see in your entire life. The reason for this is because your metabolism is in a great place, you've never dieted before and triggered this self-defense mechanism in the body. So you lose weight, it goes pretty well, you think, hey, I know what to do now, so no big deal if I gain some weight back because, you know what, I'll just go back to what I did before, lose the weight again. But what happens, you gain the weight back, you go back and do the exact same thing again, all of a sudden now it's not working or at least not as well as it did before. Then the more times you do this, the harder and harder it gets, like the first time, very easy, second time, probably not so bad, third, fourth time, getting a little harder, and then once you start doing this over and over and you've been doing it 10, 15, 20 plus years, it gets to the point where it's almost impossible to lose weight. It doesn't mean you can't make it so it's easier to lose weight again and I'm going to explain what you need to do later in this video. But it's probably never going to be as easy as that first time ever again. But here's the thing, spoiler alert, it's reverse dieting. I'll get into that, but the thing is, a lot of people get confused about what the difference is between yo-yo dieting and reverse dieting. Do you hear me talk about how you bring your calories up, you may gain a little bit of weight, but it helps put you in a place where you can more effectively lose down the road. And they think, isn't that the same thing in both cases, you're gaining weight and then losing weight, or even worse, not losing weight, but you're decreasing calories. The big difference is with yo-yo dieting, you're not giving your body enough time to adapt to the higher calories to undo the suppressions from that dieting. So when you come back later, you can see better results again. In fact, with regards to yo-yo dieting, I would literally argue that you're better off not losing any weight, never losing any weight whatsoever than you would to lose weight, only to say screw it, I give up and then gain the weight back. Because if you just didn't diet, at least your body has enough time, so when you get more serious to make it more of a lifestyle, now you'll be able to see the results, whereas if you're on again, off again all the time, you just stay stuck and there's almost nothing you can do. Now, to help illustrate this and make it hopefully make more sense, I know some people myself included do much better when they can see something visually, I went ahead and did this with a whiteboard. All right, let's try this again. Unfortunately, ring lights and whiteboards, I found out don't go together very well, as you can see here. So, I'm going to try this in another lighting, it's not the best, but hopefully you can see better what I'm trying to explain here. And I wanted to show you the difference as best I could. Hopefully it shows up okay, between yo-yo dieting at the top and reverse dieting at the bottom, so this is kind of what happens physiologically. So we've got calories in green, body fat in red, metabolism in blue and kind of what happens when you're diet, the baseline, the dotted line down the middle is sort of where your body would be if all things were the way they should be without a history of dieting and everything. So, if we're looking at this, with the yo-yo dieting, at the start, right, we're above the baseline on pretty much everything because you've never dieted before, metabolism is in a good place. You've probably gained a little extra body fat along the way, which is why you're above that baseline, but your metabolism is also in a really good place because of this. So now, you diet for the first time, probably get pretty aggressive, and you bring your calories way down, while you're bringing the calories down, you lose a bunch of body fat too, which is great. Also, your metabolism comes down, really no way to avoid this. I've got plenty of videos on ways that you can help minimize that through things like diet breaks and refeeds and whatever, but you're going to slow down your metabolism. You just cannot help this from happening. What happens is now we get to the bottom, you've lost all this weight, but now you're feeling ultra restricted, your hunger hormones are in a bad place and you just feel like you can't take it anymore and you overeat like crazy. Well, what happens? Now your calories come sky high, higher than they were before because of all the restriction, hunger hormones and everything else, and your body fat comes shooting right back up with it, even above where you actually initially started. This is not uncommon. I mean, maybe it's going to be down more towards the baseline, there could be a lot of different examples, but the point is, you gain body fat really quickly by raising calories really quickly with your metabolism slow from the dieting, it's only natural. Now, will you see some metabolic benefits? Yes, but not very much, so you can see here, like, okay, your metabolism comes up a little bit, but nowhere near at the same level as the calories and the body fat. Now you panic because you've gained all this weight, you go, crap, I need to undo this, so you go right back into a diet. You bring your calories right back down again, and you can see, okay, now your body fat starts coming down again, but not like it did last time because you're in a worse spot metabolically, your metabolism is still down here. So, your body fat comes down a bit, metabolism comes right back down again, probably even worse. Now you get into the same situation, it's too hard, it's not worth it, it's not working, screw it, overeat like crazy, body fat comes back up even more. Now you're way heavier than you were even to start with. Again, metabolism made improve a little bit during that short amount of time, but you're not giving it enough time to really adapt to the higher calories, because once again, you keep panicking, dropping your calories. Body fat might come down a little bit, but now it's only coming down to almost where you started, not really working, metabolism's even slower, really in a bad spot, and this cycle just continues and gets worse and worse and worse, as your body fat gets higher and higher and higher. Now, what happens if you reverse diet instead of go through the yo-yo diet, and what's the difference? Well, now, the starting point of this reverse would be like the bottom here of the first diet. So you just finished your diet, now instead of you bringing your calories up like crazy, you're going to gradually increase your calories, and as you can see, so calories are green, metabolisms blue. They're both kind of coming up along the same line, getting up to about where they should be, that baseline, and you can see, body fat is coming up some, right, it's not dramatic. You're still below that baseline, you're nowhere near going above and beyond where you were before, you're gaining a little bit back, but you're still much better off than you were to begin with. Now, when you take this time now, this whiteboard's only so big, if I could do a bigger board, I'd I'd have it go out to like way over here somewhere, just to signify the amount of time that you want to give it. And don't go anywhere, I'll talk about length at the end of this video, but the point is, even if you want to diet more now, especially if you have a lot of weight to lose, you need to kind of take it in phases. So now that you've put yourself back into a good spot metabolically again, now you can come back to diet again and boom, now you're going to be able to lose weight really well again. Again, calories are going to come down, metabolism's going to come down, but now you reverse diet out again, it'll come back up, but you're still going to be below these levels, right, and then over time, each time, you're just going to be less and less and less if you have a long ways to go. Otherwise, if you're just trying to kind of maintain, you just get to a good spot that you want to maintain on and kind of hover around that area. And this is how you can get back to better levels so that it's not so hard to lose all the time. Again, probably not like that first time, but much better than the position you're in right now. So what does this all tell you? Hopefully, it's becoming clear at this point, right, we can't look at weight loss and getting in better shape as some sort of short-term solution. And hopefully you know by now as well that when I say weight loss, I'm more specifically talking about fat loss. There's a difference between weight and fat, that's a topic for a different video. But the point is, you need to do things in a more sustainable manner. You need to stop rushing the process, you need to stop crash dieting all the time and doing extreme things just to get the weight off in the short-term, having no clue how you're going to keep it off in the long-term, and it has to become a lifestyle, something that you're going to continue to do. So you don't keep falling in this trap, this whole I just want to get the weight off so then I can be done thing has to go because it won't work. You have almost a 0% chance of any success if you have that mindset. So you have to stop dieting for every single occasion that's ever out there. You can't keep going into a diet for a birthday, and an anniversary, and a vacation, and a reunion. There's always something to diet for, even if it's just the summer, like we're always putting ourselves in a position where I have to diet, diet, diet, it's like, no. Slow down, be okay, don't put so much pressure on body weight, body image, and take your time, enjoy the higher calories, the extra flexibility and balance, the fact that you're going to feel better, all these very positive things about not dieting. And then when it's time to diet, now you go after it, understanding that it's a temporary situation, meaning the lower calories is temporary. You have to make it a lifestyle, but that doesn't mean you'll be low calorie and high cardio forever. When you play the long game, that's when you finally win. Keep making some mad dash to the finish line, you're going to be stuck forever and you're going to lose. Now, with all that being said, I've talked about how reverse dieting is a way to put yourself back in a better spot, get your metabolism higher. And I showed that you need to do it for a longer period of time and be patient with it to set yourself up for success, but I didn't talk about how long it needs to be and that's because it's kind of complex and it really depends upon your personal situation. So I had this video up top that you can check out next that will talk about how long you should reverse diet before dieting again. And I also have a playlist covering lots of different things with reverse dieting, including how fast increase calories and everything else in this bottom video if you want to go there instead. And I'll see you in one of those other videos.
