(NaturalHealth365)  No doubt, dieting can be quite stressful.  If you’ve tried some of the many diets out there … I’m sure  you know what I mean.

The fact is that “yo-yo dieting” only lowers the number of calories you are able to ingest and still lose weight with every diet.  It’s a common practice …

Many people looking to lose weight, lower their daily caloric intake in some effort to wake up to a slimmer body … only to find themselves at the same weight as before.  On top of that, many people throw in some sit-ups, planks, and jogging … to still see no progress.  But, why is this happening?

What if I were to tell you that you’ve been going about it completely wrong by dieting in the first place?  The truth is that dieting – in and of itself – can be profoundly detrimental to the body, unless you do it right.

How dieting can defeat the goal of weight loss

Picture this. You’re running from a rhinoceros that you didn’t know had escaped the zoo but just happened to be right outside, munching on your front lawn – when you stepped outside water the grass and angered him (or her).  So, the rhinoceros gets angry … starts to claw the ground, and then prepares to charge you. Now, what?

Obviously, you run, run, run … back to your house, where you can only pant and wait for the rhino to leave.

Right now, your body does everything it can to make sure you survive this situation.  It virtually shuts down every system of your body, so you have the energy you need to run away from danger.  But, keep in mind, it also dramatically slows down your digestion (often referred to as “metabolism”) so you can hide out and survive without starving.

It also releases a hormone called cortisol to give you more and more adrenaline. And herein lies the problem.

Cortisol is a major fat-storing hormone and by constantly releasing it through strict diets combined with our day to day stressful existences, this causes a constant flood of cortisol that spikes insulin, increases our chances of developing insulin resistance and diabetes and causes us to pad the belly in fat.

This response also reduces our ability to burn fat because insulin is elevated.  The reason why a “keto diet” works for so many people is because it helps to lower insulin to the point where the body switches to running on its own fat instead of glucose.

What’s the solution to yo-yo dieting and terrible results

Simply put: become more resilient to stress and pick a diet that you can enjoy.

Why not try one of the many healthy, highly successful diet plans out there that focus on satiety, not deprivation, as a way to lose excess body weight, lower cortisol, and get that slimmer (healthier) body you want?

One such method for (healthy) weight loss is intermittent fasting.  As an added “bonus,” intermittent fasting is great for getting youthful skin and avoiding that saggy skin that typically accompanies a major weight loss because it boosts growth hormone production – which is extremely useful in muscle preservation.

Intermittent fasting literally shaves excess fat off of the body and you only have to fast for a set period of time – not forever.  Generally speaking, with this method, you can eat two meals a day and, if strategically timed, drop as much as 36 pounds in three months.  Obviously, this depends on how much weight you need to lose.

Other ideas are the Mediterranean diet: a diet that’s super healthy, has whole populations of people living well past 100 years old in the “Blue Zone” areas, and which is full of delicious foods like fruits, vegetables, wild fatty fish, olive oil, nuts, and seeds.

I would add that it’s best to eat organic varieties of these foods, as much as possible to avoid unwanted chemicals in your diet. (another destructive force – when it comes to losing excess weight)

Other remedies to lower cortisol and stress levels

It’s hard to remove years of acquired stress overnight or even over a series of months. But what you can do is improve your body’s ability to handle stress by trying some adaptogenic herbal supplements that literally make your body more resilient to stress.

Herbs like Ashwaganda, Ginseng, Eleuthero, astragalus root, and Rhodiola are just want you need to recapture health, feel less “stressed out,” and greatly improve your body’s ability to manage stress when you must endure it.

Sources in this article include:

NIH.gov
NIH.gov