By Elena Voropay

You know dieting is easy because you've done it so many times. Finding a new diet that works better than the previous one is even easier – just think of something you haven't tried cutting from your eternal diet. And your success is almost guaranteed if the diet forbids eating your favorite delicacy and lets you eat unlimited amounts of something that tastes like tree bark. And while your taste buds remember the torture of deprivation, your emotions and insecurities set you back on the diet roller-coaster. But there is more to what you can see and feel.

Short-term weight loss and gain is not related to how much you've been eating and how much energy you burned during the past day, week, or month. Minor fluctuations you see on the scales are more associated to non-energy content, such as how much water and digested food your body contains at the moment. Some days you may find yourself bloated, or your stomach may feel fuller than usual and you feel constipated. All that bulk contributes to your total body weight giving you an unwanted reading on the scales. Also consider that the energy stores in the form of glycogen, not fat, can significantly impact your short-term weight fluctuation. Before any food gets stored as fat, it has to get your muscles and liver filled with glycogen, or stored sugars for immediate use. Only when these glycogen reserved are full. Additionally, each gram of sugar attracts 3 grams of water, giving your body a fuller healthier better-hydrated look. This equates to adding 1600 g of weight for every 400 g of glycogen. Your body needs and uses glycogen all the time, and your hormones regulate that process making sure that you never run out of energy.

Long-term weight changes reflect the results of your energy balance and clearly reflect in the mirror how strict your diet was, how much you actually followed it, and how much exercise you toughened through lately. Gaining weight may not a bad thing at all if you've been physically active, even when your goal was to lose it. The increase may come from your lean mean fat-free mass, such as protein, water and minerals needed to maintain your structure. Even sedentary people who put on kilos of fat show an increase in fat-free mass of 15 percent. The gained fat just sits on the hips and thighs thriving on the appetite and occasionally sending messages to the body developing unwanted chronic conditions such as diabetes and heart disease. But the gained lean mass does just the opposite – it burns off calories constantly, gives strength, energy and desire to move more.

Rapid weight loss usually caused by crash-diets may look good on the scales, but the pay-off may not be so great. First of all, dieting and restricting calories sends messages to all body systems and changes how your hormones work. Specifically, your thyroid hormones, the most potent metabolic stimulators, become less efficient forcing your body to burn less energy regardless of your activity. What's more, the rapid weight loss also comes from muscle waste leading to even slower metabolism. Have you been stressed out about your unsuccessful dieting lately? Well, your diet is not only the reason, it is the cause of your tension with a very physiological explanation. Dieting increases levels of stress hormones in the body. When the levels of these stress hormones are chronically elevated, your body starts breaking down your muscles to release amino acids for energy, even when you still have fat stores to burn.

The Diet Dilemma

Any veteran of diet wars can tell you that the only difference in diets is how much and what they allow to eat. Since most people happen to like their appetites and enjoy the “all you can eat” food plan, the million-dollar question for the diet industry is which foods should be restricted in order to permit unlimited amounts of other ones. This is definitely not a long-term solution for a healthy lifestyle. The biggest problem with this lies in dietary nutrient imbalances leading to deficiencies in certain vitamins, minerals, electrolytes and other components that are vital for general well-being. Chronic dieting, first restricting one type of food, then another, then a third one depletes the body of many essential components. On the other hand, overindulging on certain food groups also excretes nutrients and poses additional needs for metabolism. A good example may be recently popular carbohydrate restriction.

Nutrient Imbalances and Body Functions

Low-carbohydrate diets are known for their fast impact on weight loss, but as described above a lot of that short-term weight loss may come from dehydration and loss of muscle glycogen. Carbs from grains, fruit, and vegetables are a rich source of vitamins and many minerals that are essential for optimal brain function, muscle activity, skin, hair, eye, and liver health. They also help regulate appetite and keep the stress hormones under control. Additionally, carbohydrates have a very high Thermal Effect of Food (TEF). That means that in order to be digested and stored as glycogen, carbohydrates burn up 10 percent of their calories. And if you are afraid that your bowl of pasta will be stored as fat, then all you need to do is just watch your creamy pasta sauce. The energy cost of converting glucose to fat is almost 30 percent! On the other hand, storing fat from food as body fat will use up only 3 percent of the available energy. Protein comes close to carbs in its TEF, with approximately 24 percent. What does that mean to an Atkins dieter? That if carbohydrates are substituted by fat in every meal, less energy is burned in digestion and calories not burned immediately will be stored as fat much easier.

The body adapts to carb deprivation by dropping the pancreas' production of insulin and increasing the hormone glucagon burning fat and muscle stores as the new energy source. The same process happens with all diets that involve calorie-restriction – you burn a bit of fat and a bit of muscle. While fat burn may be good, muscle waste is the worst thing imaginable. Additionally, deriving energy from fat and protein his a harder process on the body which may make you feel tired rather than energized after a meal. Over time, tiredness may become your natural condition and you will find no energy or desire to exercise or even engage in daily activities that used to be fun and enjoyable. This holds true for all diets that restrict nutrients or calories. The reason may be found in your brain.

Your brain function may also be effected because the function of its many chemical messengers directly depends on sustained carbohydrate supply. The production of serotonin, which makes you feel calm and satisfied, requires carbohydrates to make precursor amino acid tryptophan. Without it, you may feel tense, hostile, restless, even unusually hungry. And no fat or protein can satisfy your cravings because the brain is not responding to satiety and fullness. Did you know that just 50 percent cut in blood glucose levels can lead to dizziness, nausea and eventually loss of consciousness?

Even if the diet is not a low-carb one, if it does not provide a constant supply of sufficient amounts of protein, fat and carbohydrates that come together with vitamins, minerals and other biologically active compounds – it will lead to nutrient imbalances and cause the described effects.

Another example may be the Cabbage Soup Diet. Being low in calories may explain its weight-melting effect. But too much cabbage excretes mineral Iodine from the body which has a direct impact on your Thyroid hormones. These, in turn, show changes in metabolic regulation. High fibre intake from grains, fruit, legumes and vegetables minimizes absorption of most nutrients necessary for optimal health. Eating too little fibre impairs digestion and is linked to many unwanted conditions and diseases. As you can see, yo-yo dieting eventually wracks such a havoc on the body, that it cannot manage its normal functions. Fluctuating hormones send messages to all organs and body tissues in the body. When the body is healthy and well-nourished, it can use its self-regulating healing mechanism to correct any imbalances, including needed weight loss or gain. It can even stitch the 'hunger' signals for certain foods appropriately. Unfortunately, in decades of dieting most of us have forgotten how to interpret our body signals trying to follow someone else's success.

Stop The Insanity

Before you go on another diet, remember three things in mind:

1.Diet shouldn't be a temporary solution, but a life-long eating plan that makes you feel good, gives you energy and improves your health. Any fast-and-easy weight loss promises are indications of a fad that may be detrimental to your wellness. Any weight that you may have lost on a fad diet came off at the expense of your health. And once you go back to your old eating plan, the weight will creep back on and you will feel worse than before you ever started dieting.

2.Diet should include all known food groups and promote balanced eating throughout the day for sustained energy turnover. The only beneficial restrictions may be known dangerous foods such as trans fats, alcohol and highly processed and refined carbohydrates. Regardless of nutrient combinations, moderation is the key.

3.Diet should be adjustable depending on your particular needs. If you are active, or your job requires a high brain activity then you can increase your intake of carbohydrates. Or if you have a certain condition or disease, you can substitute foods while getting the same nutrients. Dieting or not, always remember that exercise, rest and sunshine are just as important for optimal nutrient metabolism as the food itself.

Exercise May Help

If you want to lose weight, keep it off, and start burning more calories you have to exercise. This sounds simple, but may be much harder to accomplish if you have no energy to move due to your extremely restrictive diet. You know that exercise burns extra calories, melts away the stubborn fat and helps you preserve and maybe even build lean muscles that keep your metabolism sky-high. What's more, you may feel all kinds of unwanted emotions when you go on a diet. Physical activity will help you counterbalance these negative thoughts by stimulating endorphins, or feel-good chemicals in your brain. So, when is the best time to exercise?

First of all, if you want to burn more fat you have to do some aerobic activity and get more oxygen into your cells because oxygen is the fat-burning fuel. Many recommend exercising on an empty stomach, or first thing in the morning when your blood sugar is low. However, if you find yourself weak and tired when you wake up, there is no way you can your training intensity high enough to burn fat. A small breakfast may help give you a bit of needed power so you can actually have a good workout and burn much more than your breaky calories. And forget weight-training when you are hungry. Its intention is to help you build lean strong muscles which requires immediate energy from glucose, or sugar. So, resistance type activity is better achieved later in the day when your fuel is replenished. Unfortunately our bodies were not created to burn fat for muscle-building energy. To make matters simple, any exercise is best when you have energy. You have to figure out for yourself how much time you need to spare between eating and exercising to avoid stomach discomfort. As you can see, timing of food intake and exercise is your key to successful weight-loss efforts

Interesting fact

Comedians may associate the word 'diet' with life cessation (as in 'die'), but in reality it is more alive than we think. The word comes from the Latin word diaeta, meaning "way of living". Today, the word “diet”is referred to as "the usual food and drink of a person or animal."

Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2003. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.