Type D
DietQ Type D, also known as “yo-yo dieting,” is defined by a tendency to lose and regain weight in a never-ending cycle of temporary diets. At the beginning of the cycle, you have healthy goals of losing weight and getting in shape. You get serious about whatever the particular diet is, stick to it, and even see measurable success. However, when you transition off of the diet, all the weight comes right back—perhaps even with a few extra pounds.
The regaining of weight after a seemingly successful diet can make you feel like you’ve failed, especially if you’ve had this happen with many diets in the past. With the pounds back on, you’re now faced with the prospect of starting over at a higher weight than ever before. In your endless search for the “perfect diet,” you head back to the magazines and websites to find your next dietary experiment. Then, the process starts over.
Using your specialized DietQ Type D Plan’s convenient hunger level charts, you will relearn your appetite cues, make healthy choices, eat when you’re hungry, and stop when you’re full. You’ll also be able to identify the triggers that cause you to go off the diet and develop healthier habits.
Overview
The yo-yo effect is fairly common in today’s diet-obsessed culture. In an effort to lose weight as easily as possible, people flock to all sorts of restrictive diet plans, most of which involve short-term calorie restriction via some kind of extreme eating behavior (cutting out all fat, cutting out all carbohydrates, eating only protein, etc.). Likewise, there’s no shortage of companies looking to sell their diet books, supplements, workout videos, and food products to a demanding public.
What the majority of these diets don’t do is provide healthy tools for long-term success. A person might lose 15 pounds on a restrictive soup-only diet, for example, but the old habitual behaviors and beliefs about food and self-worth are still there. After so many weeks of restriction, it’s not uncommon for a person to accidentally overeat when other foods are re-introduced, further sabotaging any success.
At its core, yo-yo dieting is the result of a desire to lose weight quickly and a failure to address the underlying issues that contribute to unhealthy eating habits and weight gain. The unsustainable methods of diets work only to drop pounds—not to keep them off. Enabled by a constantly changing diet industry, this type of disordered eating is so common that it is often overlooked or treated as normal behavior. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
The problem with yo-yo dieting isn’t just an inability to lose weight, it’s also the potential physical effects of what’s known as “weight cycling,” the constant up-and-down of repeated weight loss. Over time, this kind of instability may have significant short- and long-term consequences on one’s health:
• Increasing the probability of regaining weight with each new diet
• Abnormal metabolic function
• Possible increase in heart disease risk¹
• Malnutrition*
• Vitamin or mineral deficiencies*
• Extreme fear of weight gain and/or food obsession after a diet is over (may develop into a disorder like anorexia or bulimia)
*If the diet is too restrictive or is followed for too long
Dieting sets you up for failure. With each failed attempt at dieting, you feel a loss of control. You no longer know when you are hungry or full, and your self-esteem can be damaged severely when you label yourself as either “good” or “bad” based on your diet. Obsessive thoughts and feelings like these keep you in a downward spiral.
Based on the attributes specific to your DietQ Type D, we’ll provide you with a solid plan to change your eating behaviors. You will be led through a series of structured steps to help you develop an internal control that you can use for a lifetime!
Solution
People with DietQ Type D have come to depend on an external source—a diet of some kind—to tell them what, when and how much to eat. When you repeatedly depend on a diet, you begin to disengage from your natural internal appetite. While you’re on the diet, your attempts to get control of your eating behaviors work for a while but result in the same outcome: You lose weight only to regain it again. This affects your self-esteem and creates a sense of failure.
Even though you have tried using a structured food plan and failed, you are always hopeful that the next diet will be the one that will finally work. When you are on a diet, you restrict food intake, which, ultimately, decreases your metabolism. When you return to eating normally, you regain more weight than you lost. Restricting food eventually leads to a binge, and so the cycle continues.
Your DietQ Type D Plan is specific to your personality, lifestyle, eating attitudes, and triggers. The DietQ Plan will show you what makes you eat when you don’t want to (and have trouble stopping), as well as how to get in touch with your natural appetite cues so you can eat when you’re hungry, make healthy food choices and stop when you’re full—easily, effectively, and naturally!
