This is what we’ve been saying all along here at 10in30 Fitness. Going on “crash diets” where you starve yourself is a terrible thing to do to your precious body. You are training your body and brain to hang on to fat in preparation for future starvation. And if you do this often as with yo-yo dieting, you are damaging your body over and over.

Our Lose 10 Pounds plan is not a starvation diet. We gradually lower your calories based on your specific body, weight, and fat percentage. The key is to gradually lower your daily calories and end up with the right number of calories to lose weight. You can’t just jump into a big caloric deficit! But you do have to have enough of a deficit for your body to get rid of body fat, so the numbers have to be just right.

Repeated dieting may lead to weight gain because the brain interprets the diets as short famines and urges the person to store more fat for future shortages, new research by the universities of Exeter and Bristol suggests.

“This may explain why people who try low-calorie diets often overeat when not dieting and so don’t keep the weight off.

By contrast, people who don’t diet will learn that food supplies are reliable and they do not need to store so much fat.

The study, published in the journal Evolution, Medicine and Public Health, is based on observations of animals such as birds.

Animals respond to the risk of food shortage by gaining weight, which is why garden birds are fatter in the winter when seeds and insects are hard to find.

The authors studied a mathematical model of an animal that knows whether food is currently abundant or limited, but does not know when things will change, so must learn about the changeability before deciding how fat to be.

The model shows that if food supply is often restricted (as it is when dieting) an optimal animal — the one with the best chance of passing on its genes — should gain excess weight between food shortages.“

Fascinating stuff, eh? To read the rest of the article in Science Daily, click here.