What is the yo-yo effect?
The yo-yo effect refers to the situation where body weight and body fat fluctuate up and down like a yo-yo. This most commonly occurs because of the wrong way to lose weight. When you lose weight, your body fat, although it drops, your metabolism, muscle mass, and hormones all go haywire, and you may even gain more weight than before. Then you'll want to lose weight again, but after losing weight, you'll gain even more. You will be caught in this cycle, causing your body fat to increase and the effect of weight loss to become less and less. So today, I will mainly talk about how to lose weight correctly and how to control it after losing weight to avoid the yo-yo effect.
How can you avoid the yo-yo effect?
First misconception: you shouldn't be trying to lose fat at all
There are two reasons for a high body fat percentage:
- either you have a lot of body fat and therefore, a high body fat percentage
- or you have very little muscle mass and, therefore, a high body fat percentage
Second misconception: eating too little causes the metabolism to slow down.
This is a mistake that many people make. We usually advise against eating too little for long periods, as the metabolism will slow down too quickly.
This study shows that after three months on a very low-calorie diet, although body weight has decreased, metabolism has also dropped significantly. Five weeks after resuming the diet, it is still as low as before, which will greatly increase the chance of weight regain.
I would recommend keeping calorie intake at about 80% of TDEE. Weight loss should be about -0.5% to 1.2% of total body weight per week. Don't go too fast, or you'll easily gain it back.
Third misconception: Not eating enough protein causes muscle mass to decrease
High muscle mass is very important for maintaining a good figure in the long term. Most studies recommend eating 1.6 to 2.4 g kg. If you don't like doing the math, it's roughly eating 3 to 5 palm-sized portions of lean meat. If you have small hands, you may have to eat six palm-sized portions. This number will change depending on your training volume and dietary intake. For example, when I was cutting fat, I did 20 exercises a week in the end, including cardio and weight training, and then reduced my calorie intake from 2,400 to 1,800. I would eat until I reached 2.8 to 3g of protein per kilogram of body weight.
Some studies have also pointed out that eating more than 2.4g/kg will not have a better effect, but eating more protein is very effective in terms of increasing satiety during the fat-loss process.
Fourth misconception: The wrong exercise
From my side, I can directly rule out the worst to the best training methods.
Overtraining > no exercise at all > cardio only > weights > weights followed by cardio > weights and cardio separately
The first three will cause you to easily lose muscle mass, resulting in a decrease in metabolism. In addition to a decrease in muscle mass, overtraining will also mess with your hormone secretion. Heavy training is the key to retaining muscle mass, and the most important thing is to maintain the intensity of heavy training so that muscle mass will not be easily lost.
If you increase the training volume during fat loss, you will easily cause the problem of overtraining. So, to put it simply, try not to reduce the weight as much as possible, and the number of sets can be adjusted according to your physical condition. Then, when you feel that you can't lose weight, you can try heavy training + aerobic, but it is recommended that the aerobic time not exceed half of the heavy training time.
Fifth misconception: lack of sleep
Sleep is important for maintaining muscle mass, metabolism, and hormones.
Research source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20921542
I have shared this research before. The group with poor sleep had a 55% reduction in fat loss and a 60% increase in muscle loss
This is mainly because sleep is closely related to hormone secretion in the body. Important hormones such as insulin and growth hormone can be affected by poor sleep. A decrease in muscle mass will increase the chance of a yo-yo effect in the future.
Another common question: intermittent fasting
Will intermittent fasting cause a decrease in metabolism and muscle mass? This has been discussed before. To put it simply, it will not, so there is no need to worry!
How do you maintain the fat loss after success to avoid the yo-yo effect?
If you can do all of the above, losing weight won't be too difficult. The hard part is what to do after you've reached your target body fat percentage so that it doesn't go back up.
Here are some more common misconceptions:
After losing weight, you go back to eating the way you did before losing weight
The reason you were fat in the first place is that you were eating like crazy before losing weight. No matter what weight loss method you use, if you go back to eating the way you did before losing weight, you will gain weight more easily because your metabolism after losing weight will be lower anyway.
Without gradually restoring your metabolism
After losing weight, you should slowly increase your food intake and choose foods with high nutritional value as much as possible so that you can restore the metabolism that has dropped during the weight loss process.
From a research perspective, a low-GI diet with high protein content is the best way to prevent weight regain after losing fat. You already eat a lot of protein during the fat loss process, so after losing weight, you can choose to eat more good fats and carbohydrates, but don't increase too quickly at once because, after fat loss, it is a great time to build muscle. However, if you eat too fast and cause too much fat to grow, it will inhibit the effect of building muscle.
After a fat loss, stop exercising.
If you previously burned 3,000 calories per week through aerobic and weight training, and then suddenly you stop doing both, it will be very easy for you to gain weight again. So don't stop all of your aerobic exercises at once, and don't stop weight training.
In summary, a good fat loss plan emphasizes a steady decrease in body fat without being too fast or too restrictive, which can cause a lot of physical and mental stress. Otherwise, after the diet is over, you will binge eat, which will cancel out the fat loss results you achieved in two months in just two weeks.