6 Long Term Health Effects of Fad Diets
Keto, Atkins, paleo, juice cleanses, OMAD (one meal a day), IIFYM (if it fits your macros), Jenny Craig, and Weight Watchers are all some of the most popular fad diets that people fall victim to trying. It is estimated that 45 million Americans go on a diet each year. The common denominator between all of these diets is that they all make you eat a lower amount of calories by restricting types or amounts of food you eat to promote a calorie deficit. They are usually backed by a small amount of science without many long-term trials. You know these diets because most of them have a large social media presence to make them trendy. Think about a time where you or someone you know has tried one of these diets, how long could they stick to it and keep the weight off? Were they satisfied with the diet? The truth is, we are not meant to eat only foods based on a strict diet plan with no flexibility.
Many people try these fad diets and see a small amount of progress which leads them into a downward spiral of excessive dieting and combining food rules to have quicker results. The problem is that excessive restriction of certain types and amounts of foods is a sign of disordered eating. Over time this can do more harm than good. Here we talk about long term health effects caused by fad diets and disordered eating patterns.
Source: BMC
Here are 6 Long term health effects of fad diets:
1. WEIGHT CYCLING
As fad dieting becomes more severe in one’s daily life, weight cycling can become a large concern. Weight cycling is when you go through periods of high weight followed by periods of having a low weight and vice versa and you constantly oscillate between the two. Approximately 20-50% of women in the nation struggle with weight cycling, so it is important to know the implications and causes of it. The reason that weight cycling occurs as a result of fad dieting is because the more restrictive you are, the more your body wants to fight against it. High restriction can lead to a lower weight, but the sustainability of that low weight may become close to impossible to maintain, so your body will send you continuous signals to eat, and over time you can’t resist them anymore resulting in weight gain. Researchers have found that weight cycling can actually be worse than sustaining a higher weight in terms of health risks such as high insulin levels, blood pressure, cardiac output, cortisol sensitivity, and blood glucose levels which will be touched in the following sections.
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2. HIGHER BMI
Higher BMI is one of the long term outcomes of fad diets, which can sound ironic. Note that BMI is not the most accurate measure of body composition and that BMI is not a sole measure of health. We use BMI as just one piece to the puzzle because a weight or BMI-focused mindset is one of the main factors that lead people into fad dieting. Now, most people go on a fat diet in the pursuit of weight loss, but surprisingly, the opposite outcome can surface in the long term. This is because fad diets and their rules can be hard to stick to, and once you lose so much weight, your body will fight against it by increasing hunger hormone levels (ghrelin) and decreasing the fullness hormone levels (leptin). Eventually, this leads people to have ‘cheat days’ or a ‘diet break’ resulting in overeating, and weight gain. Note that this weight gain is supposed to happen because your body is starving and needs fuel! The act of starting a fad diet becomes counterintuitive because you end up losing weight in the short term and gaining weight in the long term. Specifically, researchers have found that those in the normal BMI range who start dieting and engage in disordered eating have the most significant weight regain after periods of restriction in comparison to those who start in the overweight or obese BMI category.
3. HYPERINSULINEMIA
Another one of the outcomes from persistent fad dieting is hyperinsulinemia, which is when you have elevated insulin levels. Insulin is an anabolic hormone released from our pancreas when we eat food. It helps us to put glucose into our cells for energy or into our fat cells for storage. The problem with hyperinsulinemia is that too much insulin in the bloodstream can signal the ovaries to produce more testosterone which is not good for hormone balance. Additionally, hyperinsulinemia can lead to insulin resistance and prediabetes. This condition occurs due to continuous weight cycling and is statistically more common in people within the normal BMI ranges because of the overshoot theory. This theory indicates that the people in the normal BMI range who undergo weight cycling will end up overshooting metabolic and cardiovascular health markers when they gain the weight back. Basically, after periods of weight cycling due to disordered eating and excessive dieting they found that serum insulin levels were very elevated to abnormal levels.
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4. BLUNTED CORTISOL REACTIVITY
Having a blunted cortisol reactivity is also a long-term outcome of fad dieting. High-stress situations have been shown to elevate our cortisol levels over time which leads to negative health outcomes. Specifically, when you are under chronic stress your body is supposed to respond to that high cortisol output. Researchers have found that those who have disordered eating patterns will have a blunted cortisol response to psychological stress compared to the control group who have a normal cortisol response. The blunted cortisol response shows that the body is under chronic stress and over time the excessive cortisol release is not dealt with the same way it would in healthy circumstances. This is one of the reasons for elevated BMI and other metabolic problems.
Source: 24183140
5. IMPAIRED CARDIAC FUNCTION
Impaired cardiac output refers to these cardiovascular factors that can overwork your heart and put you at a higher risk for hypertension, heart disease, or stroke so it is important to understand how to prevent it. Unfortunately, increased cardiac output is one of the negative outcomes of weight cycling due to disordered eating. In a study with lean women, they underwent 2 cycles of weight loss (4.4kg) and weight regain (ad libitum, or however much necessary). This study design mimics what happens during a fad diet. You start off on the diet, then you fall off and eat normally, but since you gain the weight back you restart the fad diet. After the 2 cycles, the participant’s health markers were evaluated 100 days after the study finished, and they found a significant increase in plasma triglycerides and an increase in systolic and diastolic blood pressures. These results align with the overshoot theory as well. A possible mechanism for the increase in blood pressure can be that when you are smaller your heart doesn’t have to pump blood as hard as it would when you are bigger, so when you weight cycle, your heart will have a harder time adjusting to the new size of your body and will go into overdrive pumping harder. Additionally, studies found that those who had disordered eating behaviors from fad dieting had an attenuated vasodilatory response. Vasodilation is when our vessels increase in diameter to provide more blood flow to an area of injury or special concern. This increase in blood flow is good because it allows anti-inflammatory molecules to heal the area. Conversely in those with disordered eating habits, they experience reduced or attenuated vasodilation which reduces healing time and immunity. Lastly, a study found that even those with disordered eating tendencies who didn’t have a diagnosis had the same poor health markers as those who are formally diagnosed with bulimia. This is important to acknowledge that having the patterns of disordered eating from fad dieting can be just as those who are already formally diagnosed with an eating disorder
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6. EATING DISORDER
Also somewhat ironically, some who engage in fad diets can take things way too far and develop an eating disorder. The irony in this is that fad diets promote ‘losing weight to be healthy’ or they say ‘this is a wellness program’, but what they don’t realize is that some people take the guidelines too far and develop an eating disorder. There are 3 main eating disorders that can arise from excessive disordered eating behaviors. They are called anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorder. Specifically, anorexia nervosa is the deadliest mental illness, and it is reported every 52 minutes someone loses their life from complications of an eating disorder. Eating disorders can have a variety of origins, but they all can stem from a seemingly innocent fad diet that turns into an entire lifestyle of food rules and disordered eating habits. All 3 of the eating disorders have a component of physical or mental restriction of food which can lead to either excessive eating episodes in bulimia and binge eating disorder or they can lead to excessive starvation as in the case of anorexia. Food and your weight should not take up your entire mental headspace. If you or someone else is going through a deep path of disordered eating or chronic fad dieting, please seek help immediately.
