Why do so Many People End Up Yo-Yo Dieting?

Nobody enjoys yo-yo dieting, yet many people still find their weight regularly fluctuating, as they go from diet to diet in a desperate bid to control their weight for good. The trouble is that it is hard to motivate yourself to continually watch what you eat and to force yourself to go to the gym when you really can't be bothered. When you're on a health kick and you're focused on losing weight, you seem to be able to find the extra motivation to do so, but when it comes to maintaining a healthy weight, most people just don't have the patience or inclination to.

It's not surprising, really, if you don't enjoy exercise, but you do enjoy eating, socialising with friends and lazing around the house. Clearly, if you eat out regularly, drink too much in the evenings or at the weekend and generally lead a sedentary lifestyle it's bound to be difficult to control your weight. If you regularly consume more calories than you burn, the only result is going to be weight gain. Unfortunately, very few people actually want to gain weight, as their clothes no longer fit and they don't like the way they look, whilst health is also an issue.

Yet, those who find themselves caught up in yo-yo dieting don't appear to have health at the forefront of their mind when they go on a diet. There are so many different diet plans to choose from and they all appeal to people who are anxious to lose weight quickly. These diets do not focus on getting you to fundamentally change your habits; they simply offer you a quick-fix solution, enabling you to lose large amounts of weight quickly – in the beginning, at least. You can only live on cabbage soup for so long before you're left feeling completely depleted and demoralised, though.

This is when you give up on your diet and 'treat' yourself to all those foods you've not been allowed and, as a consequence, the weight makes a return as quickly as it disappeared. Your body needs a regular intake of fuel; not to have to contend with an alternating pattern of starvation and overindulgence. The more you lose and gain weight, the more reluctant your body becomes to let go of the extra weight you're carrying. It also becomes harder to get in the right place, mentally, to lose weight and you find yourself trapped in a body you're unhappy with.

For some reason, though, people cannot get away from the idea that you have to go on a specific kind of diet to lose weight, when, really, the focus should be on calorie control and an increase in activity levels. It just seems that people's lifestyles and interests make losing weight harder, so that people look for a quick-fix option for their weight problem, even though in the long run this will not provide them with the tools to manage their weight. Unfortunately, to avoid getting caught in a cycle of yo-yo dieting you basically have to get used to monitoring your eating and exercise habits, so that you can adjust them when you need to and avoid weight gain.