What is diet shock? It’s a description of what happens to your body when it enters into emergency energy conservation. This occurs because your body is faced with weight loss from consuming fewer calories. This conservation state is obviously counteractive to personal weight loss efforts; but diet shock is what your body does to protect itself against the rigors of starvation.
Starvation is what happens when you reduce the amount of food that you eat. Your body is biologically programmed to conserve its food source. When it believes there is a potential food loss – famine for example – it begins to response by conserving every bit of energy it can.
It may take time for you to see the effects of the diet shock. It usually appears whenever you slip on your diet or stop dieting all together. Your body will regain the weight quickly after the dieting.
Diet shock is what results in yo-yo dieting. Where your weight goes up and down like a yo-yo depending on the diet you are on. It affects over 67% of first-time dieters. They may experience tremendous weight loss in the first few weeks, then resume normal eating habits. Their weight will shoot back to what it was before the diet or even put on additional pounds.
This type of diet shock is actually worse for your body than the initial weight you were trying to lose. A diet plan that helps prevent diet shock is one that leads to healthy weight loss over time in a manner that you can sustain. They usually require lifestyle changes. They may mean you drink only one soda a day – not one soda a day for a few weeks then returning to four to five a day.
Avoiding diet shock, helps you to avoid the yo-yo effect of dieting.