Binge Eating Disorder and the Yo-Yo Diet

People with binge eating disorder are prone to dieting, fad dieting, and even yo-yo dieting. A yo-yo diet, also known as weight cycling, is when a person loses and regains weight. This person's weight swings back and forth like a yo-yo. Medical experts have shown this rapid weight loss and gain can cause health problems and health-related risks. Although more research is needed, what is currently known about yo-yo dieting is that it doesn't lead to better health and weight management.

How Do Yo-Yo Diets Start?

Yo-yo diets start out like any other diet. For me, they would begin when I felt disgusted
with myself and resolved to lose weight. I would see an ad for a diet or decide to concoct a diet plan myself (I once tried a grilled cheese diet. Don't ask.) and I would be off. Of course, my hairbrained schemes never panned out with the unrealistic thinness that was always my ultimate goal.

After my diet had failed, I would feel worse than before. Yet another attempt to lose weight had blown up in my face. If the diet failed because I binged, I would continue to binge. If the diet failed for any other reason, I would still go back to binging. I would revel in being able to eat all of the food I had restricted myself from and, naturally, the weight would return. Often leaving me weighing more than when I had first started.

Yo-Yo Dieting and Starvation Diets

When I was in my early 20s, part of my yo-yo diets was starvation dieting. I would go on fasts, as I liked to call them, for as long as I could stand it. I would lose a great deal of weight while I did; and once I was no longer starving my body of the nutrients it needed to survive, the weight would return and I would be back where I started from.

A starvation diet is incredibly hard on your body. The only thing worse than doing it once is doing it multiple times with more dieting and restrictive eating in between.

What Should I Do Instead of Yo-Yo Dieting in Binge Eating Disorder?

If you want to lose weight in binge eating disorder, instead of yo-yo dieting, go to your doctor and discuss your options. Your doctor will best know how to help you and they can give you a referral to other doctors or specialists who can help you set realistic goals and achieve them.

When the next diet rolls around, it will look shiny and new and it will promise to change your life. But weight loss is not easy and no easy fix is going to solve the issue. It will just became part of the cycle that is weight cycling.

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