Taming the Beast Called Weight Recycling

Kelly and Todd love each other as deeply as humanly possible. Married at ages 30 and 50, they live and love to full measure, decade after decade, in their historic, suburban and local beach homes. 
They entered couples therapy to design time to enjoy each other in lives dominated by grading graduate school exams and meeting editorial deadlines in academic publishing in the natural sciences. Both teach graduate level cell biology but only Todd has tenure.
Kelly submits brutally competitive national grants which demand seemingly unending prep time. Despite best intentions, Kelly yo-yos 20 pounds most years. She lacks time for self-care.
This contributes to lower self-esteem and impatience with her vulnerability which, in turn, leads her to distance herself from Todd, who busies himself with ongoing renovation and horticultural interests.
Each weekend reinforces the dysfunctional intimacy pattern of avoidance in favor of less intimate activities.
Although he finds her attractive, she does not feel desirable at her higher weights.
For Kelly, each weight recycling cycle creates more resistance the next time. It does not help her that Todd must eat every few hours to nourish his quick metabolism, and routinely brings nuts to his four-hour group therapy sessions to boost his energy.
Kelly has struggled with weight ever since she stopped nearly daily Zumba classes. She feels imprisoned by her helplessness. “This year is the last time,” she promises herself, but her stressful life makes her a liar year after year.
Strikingly dressed in carefully chosen outfits that minimize extra weight, she cuts a stunning figure as she walks gracefully into her class. Periwinkle blue heels offset a periwinkle and grey suit. Her tawny hair is carefully streaked to enliven intelligent green eyes.  Skillful makeup outlines high cheekbones and adds gentle sparkle to her eyelids.
As Todd reassures her, “In my book, it doesn’t make one whit of difference what you weigh. You are the most beautiful woman I know.” He means it, but Kelly regrets that she has had to stop jogging due to discomfort from knees carrying extra weight. She knows too much to feel complacent. 
Both members of a couple’s psychotherapy group that deeply admires and cares about them, members have cheered Kelly’s ability to drop 40 pounds. 
At her “thin weight,” she would appear in snugly fitting winter knit dresses and bare-shouldered summer sundresses, but just before Thanksgiving, like a squirrel, she stores calories until 15 despised pounds appear.  She correctly admits that her push for tenure and her loyalty to her students’ requests result in shortchanging her health, her beauty, her friendships, and her marriage. She “forgets” to be careful, or rationalizes that “our annual trip to Bermuda is too special to waste on dieting.”
But is it? Science tells us that yo-yo dieting, or weight cycling, fuels a multibillion-dollar industry as adults go on and off diets with the changing seasons. Frequent dangers in this pattern are all too familiar:
1.    Irregular nutritional patterns increase insulin and estrogen, creating weight around the waist which research links to insulin resistance, diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease.
2.    Yo-yo eating causes the body to cling to calories to ensure sufficient nutrition. We need to eat fewer calories over time to lose weight after weight cycling.
3.    We lose our own resolve and confidence the more frequently we repeat this gain-lose-gain cycle.
4.    Constant crash dieting causes your body to cling to the calories eaten to ensure sufficient nutrition. Deprivation engenders resentment and leads to the occasional cheating that brings back dangerous weight.
What can Kelly and so many of us do? Here, a few tips to stop weight recycling:
1.    Soothe stress with no additional calories. We don’t register what we are eating when food slides down too fast. Have a list ready of alternate stress relievers which might include a quick walk or a cup of tea. Brief distraction reduces stress levels, enabling a return to work.
2.    Focus on overall health. Remain hydrated by drinking two-thirds of your body weight in ounces of water each day. Make time for exercise and relaxation.
3.    Group-based systems can help you stay accountable. Join an online pep squad.
4.    Set feasible goals. Look at your body. Try to reduce belly fat which is linked to heart disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and cancer. But once the weight range is healthy, fat stored in the hips and bottom may be too hard to reduce. Make that work.
To consider: And you? Does the ugly giant of yo-yo dieting sneak up on you when you are not looking? What would you do to tame it? Would your health be worth the effort?
To read: Yoyo Dieting Might Cause Extra Weight Gain. 2016, Science Daily. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161205113908.htm.
 
Find Dr. Judith Coche doing psychotherapy with yo-yo dieters at The Coche Center, LLC at Rittenhouse Square and in Stone Harbor.  Contact her through www.cochecenter.com.