We have all done it. Maybe it was for a big event, maybe it was for a guy or maybe it’s just before your yearly vacation and you wanted to make sure you looked good on the beach. We lose a bunch of weight quickly, we look great for awhile, then we go back to our “normal eating habits”. While we may look good for a little while, think about what that is doing to your insides.

One of the biggest problems with on and off diets is that we sabotage ourselves by confusing our metabolism. When you don’t eat, your metabolism learns to slow down and make every calorie count. It goes into survival mode and starts storing and saving up instead of utilizing the food you eat when you eat it. Your body doesn’t know where its next meal is coming from, so it savors every last bite. That’s the problem with skipping meals. Your body gets used to starving and then when you do eat, you pack on the pounds.

So you have tried the “grapefruit diet”? The “no carbs diet”? The “all liquids diet”? How about the “only raw fruits and veggies diet”? I bet you even lost a lot of weight while you did them.

Your body is a machine- and you need to take care of it all year round. When we starve ourselves, we end up losing more than just fat. When you do an extreme diet your body will start to metabolize its fat stores. At the same rate that fat is being used, muscle is being broken down and used as fuel too. While this may make you look a lot thinner, this is terrible for your body and will hurt your dieting efforts in the long run. Having a higher muscle mass is always a good thing. Muscles burn calories, even when you are not working out. That’s a big deal! Muscles help you stay thin even when you are not in the gym. Another good thing to know about muscles is that they are more dense than fat. This means that if you have a lot of muscle you will weigh more then someone who is the same size but has a higher body fat percentage. Don’t let this scare you. Being toned is the best look you can have. No one cares what your scale says when you have a lean athletic looking body.

Speaking of your body being a machine- your body needs oils. The gall bladder is one of the biggest victims of yo yo diets. The gall bladder plays a special role in helping digest fats. It’s also an organ that doesn’t like change. If you spend half your year eating fast food and fried treats, your gall bladder is happy to help out. It creates a lot of enzymes to move your delectable diet of french fries along. But then you decide to clean up your act and stop eating all fats. Well, your gall bladder has a history of producing all these enzymes, and now it’s not needed. The enzymes then just have to hang out in the gall bladder until your body calls them to action again. If this is a habit, the enzymes that are just hanging out in the gall bladder begin to form sludge or even stones. This isn’t a problem while you are on the diet, but one greasy piece of pizza later and your gall bladder is trying to push out those enzymes that contain stones. Gall bladder attacks are an epidemic among women that are over-weight, just about 40 and have some kids. The pain usually hits at night and feels like stabbing in you right shoulder blade. Gall bladder problems are jump started by a pattern many of us started in our 20s. Of course, the gall bladder can be easily removed to stop the problem, but isn’t prevention a better option?

What’s the solution? Setting realistic goals. Don’t do anything that is too extreme. Exercise.

Start off with baby steps. On week one, just add drinking half your weight in ounces of water everyday. Week two, add vegetables to every meal. Simple small sustainable changes can mean big results at the scale.

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