Is Dieting Good? Is Dieting Bad?

Is dieting good? Is dieting bad?

One thing that's for certain is that dieting is STRESSFUL...both mentally as well as physically. And this stress creates chemical changes that make it HARDER for your body to lose fat.

Watch and learn why traditional "diets" are set up to make you fail.

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Here's a tidbit from The Resiliency rEvolution as to why traditional "diets" are set up to make you fail.

Next time you consider going on a diet, stop and think: what would a caveman do? Could you ever imagine Sneaky Pete going completely against his biological drive for survival by purposefully eating less food when it was available?

Having a crazy sweet tooth helped us survive when food was scarce, and having extra body fat was an important life insurance policy. They were both needed for our ancestors to function well and endure their harsh environments. Those who were more driven to eat and those who stored fat had a better chance at survival. And as you know, caveman brain is still very impulsive, not to mention obsessed with seeking comfort and pleasure. It’s the part of the brain that screams at us: Eat that! Drink that! Smoke that! It wants what it wants, when it wants it, and it doesn’t care much about the future consequences.

We are not hardwired to eat less.

Dieting couldn’t be more opposite to how we’re designed to function, which makes it physiologically as well as psychologically stressful. Even worse, dieting is one of the best ways to gain weight, not lose it. Research shows that people who diet end up gaining more weight over time than people who never do. [30] Here’s the cycle showing why:

1. Dieting releases cortisol. Research has shown that calorie restriction increases the production of cortisol. [31] This makes sense. Low blood glucose levels from not eating enough or going too long without eating stimulate the release of cortisol. The body thinks no food is available, the HPA axis is activated, and cortisol is released.
2. Cortisol then makes us overeat. We know cortisol’s job is to replace the energy we theoretically spent while fighting and fleeing. When dieting, the only thing we’re “fighting” is the urge to eat that chocolate chip cookie, and we usually don’t win. The cortisol-induced hunger makes us seek out large amounts of food high in fat and sugar.
3. And cortisol makes us store fat. Cortisol wants to restock the fight-or-flight fuel allocation station. It takes that food we overeat and converts it into stored fat on the body, primarily around the midsection.
4. Then we lose precious muscle mass. When the body is in fat-storage mode, it breaks down stored protein from muscle mass and converts it into usable energy. Less muscle mass and more fat make us less sensitive to insulin, the pancreas has to produce more, and body fat levels rise—all events that place additional stress on the body.
5. And it slows our metabolism. When the body goes into energy-conservation mode, it doesn’t just store fat. It also slows metabolic rate in order to conserve precious and limited energy supplies. When we’re dieting and we fail to eat when we’re hungry, it can suppress resting metabolic rate by up to 20 percent. [32] We not only generate less energy, but we burn less of it as well. Over the long run, this loss of muscle mass and decrease in metabolism can increase body fat—the exact opposite of what we’re trying to do on a diet.

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