How Yo-Yo Dieting Can Stress Your Brain
A good friend of mine has been battling with her weight for years. She has been on every diet known to man kind, read all the diet books, cooked all the diet recipes for herself and her family and yet her weight bounces up and down like the veritable yo-yo.
I don’t think her partner has ever dieted in his life. He works hard, plays hard, exercises. He enjoys his food and stays slim and trim.
Unfair?
Perhaps. But now scientists may have discovered why repeated dieting fails.
Most dietary advice indicates that it would be prudent to cut down on known “fattening” foods and increase exercise. And yes this may produce the desired effect until the diet is stopped, old eating patterns return and so does the weight along with a bit extra for good measure.
We also know that comfort eating to deal with stress, accounts for much obesity.
Increased levels of obesity and increased levels of diabetes put us at greater risk of developing dementia as we get older.
In this research, Scientists from the Scripps Research Institute in Boston took two groups of rats. One group as the control just had their regular rodent food. The other group was fed “normal” food for 5 days and alternated with 2 days of “sweet” food, the equivalent of us enjoying a few servings of high fat, high sugar desserts.
The dieting group on their normal diet ate less and avoided stress related situations (What that is in rat terms I don’t actually know!)
When on the high sugar diet they coped better with anxiety provoking situations, but also ate more. Plus those in the diet group when on “normal” food were found a much higher level of a stress neuropeptide CRF x5 that of the control group. This stress hormone returned to normal when the rats went back onto the high sugar diet again.
Aha!
How often have you heard the excuse of people tucking into a huge bowl of ice cream or consuming that family bar of chocolate because they feel stressed?
OK I confess, I’ve done it too.
But maybe we do it not because we actually are stressed. It’s that our brain is telling us we feel stressed (by having a higher level of the stress neuropeptide CRF in our system) because you are showing withdrawals to the high sugar/fat foods that we have intermittently.
In other words, frequent changes to our diet being “good” for a period of time followed by going back to our usual eating patterns works against us big time because of the changes that occur as a result of this, in our brain.
So sadly for my friend until she can lose the diet books and choose to implement a healthy eating plan she will continue with her vicious circle of dieting and overeating. Her continued efforts of deprivation and compensatory binge eating will not only deprive her of continued successful weight management but more importantly make her at risk of heart disease and poorer cognitive function, particularly as she gets older.
The key to deactivating the stress response by our brain is losing the idea of dieting, as that for most of us conjures up deprivation and not being allowed to eat certain foods that we like. And for most of us what we know we “mustn’t have” is instantly more desirable!
By eating a varied diet including all the fabulous brain foods such as fish, fruits, vegetables and nuts we can work towards maintaining a healthy weight, enjoying mood stability and better thinking.
Related Posts
Tags: Brain, dementia, diabetes, dieting, stress, weight loss
March 18th, 2010 at 7:37 am
I just posted this page on my facebook account. it is a very interesting read for all.
March 19th, 2010 at 9:53 pm
Hey guys, i really know how it is to suffer from a problem like this. I’ve struggling from it since a few months with the normal ups and downs so i really know its not fun when you have a problem like this. At some website i found out some members were truly happy about a capsule they got from the internet and i ordered it when i found those pills at – herbalhealingstore dot com -. So you see, these herbals do work, you just have to find the good ones!
March 20th, 2010 at 12:56 pm
I haven’t seen or heard about something like this in ages. Awesome!
March 21st, 2010 at 7:00 am
I enjoyed reading such a good post. Such insighful writing is rare these days. Informed comment like this has to be applauded. I’ll certainly be looking in on this blog again soon!
March 21st, 2010 at 8:51 am
Nice looking blog you have here. The theme is awesome, great color combination.
March 21st, 2010 at 5:01 pm
Nice site, it’s the same template as one of my sites actually but yours is a bit fresher looking.
March 21st, 2010 at 5:59 pm
I like the layout of your blog and I’m going to do the same thing for mine. Do you have any tips? Please PM ME on yahoo @ AmandaLovesYou702 1 7 5
March 22nd, 2010 at 8:39 am
Was just searching bing and found your blog, it looks great.
March 22nd, 2010 at 11:43 am
Your website has a lot of useful information. Glad you’ve taken the time to share it with us.
March 22nd, 2010 at 12:03 pm
Love it!
March 23rd, 2010 at 1:32 am
HI, I’m glad you like the layout of the blog. it is one of WordPress’s themes so should be readily available if you wanted to use the same one. Hope that helps.
March 23rd, 2010 at 5:27 am
Your blog is so informative … keep up the good work!!!!
March 27th, 2010 at 11:11 am
I never ever post, but this time I will…thanks alot for the great blog.
March 29th, 2010 at 3:44 am
Great post, bookmarked your site, will be back later.
March 29th, 2010 at 10:54 pm
Your blog is so informative … keep up the good work!!!!
March 30th, 2010 at 2:04 am
Thanks for posting. Hope to hear back from you again. I’ll keep blogging.
March 30th, 2010 at 3:52 am
well written article, i just finished bookmarking it to read later. i would like to check on new posts. how do i set up the rss reader again? thanks so much!
April 1st, 2010 at 2:02 pm
Currently this can be a great web site with info a lot of and a lot of folks are trying for. I’ll certainly come back back a lot of often. healthy-dieting.zxq
April 4th, 2010 at 2:48 pm
Haha so true.
April 25th, 2010 at 3:29 am
Great articles & Nice a site….
May 4th, 2010 at 12:48 pm
Good for you! Great post.
May 12th, 2010 at 10:53 am
Awesome Post. I add this Post to my bookmarks.
May 13th, 2010 at 5:08 pm
I came across your blog and was impressed. You have some very good information in here. Where do you choose to research – just curious of course? Keep up the excellent journaling.
May 24th, 2010 at 12:15 am
Hi there I like your post
May 28th, 2010 at 3:42 am
Great stuff from you, man. Ive read your stuff before and youre just too awesome. I love what youve got here, love what youre saying and the way you say it. You make it entertaining and you still manage to keep it smart. I cant wait to read more from you. This is really a great blog.
May 30th, 2010 at 9:05 am
You certainly deserve a round of applause for your post and more specifically, your blog in general. Very high quality material
June 9th, 2010 at 8:21 pm
I found this site from looking over Yahoo and just wanted to say thank you for this interesting post on weight loss. Thank you again!
May 23rd, 2011 at 12:15 am
Just learned your Internet page by way of google and i contemplate this could be a shame that you’re not ranked upper because of the reality that that’s a fantastic post. To switch this i determined to avoid losing your internet site to my Rss reader and I’ll attempt to point out you in 1 of my posts since you actually deserv extra readers when publishing content material of this quality.