If there is something that characterizes the food of our current society, it is the fact of suffering large rates of obesity due to poor diet, malnutrition – not malnutrition – associated with the consumption of ultra-processed foods and sugars and a life full of diets motivated by body image and no health
In this context, we have already told you several times about the high prevalence of miracle diets and their negative effects on our health and our weight. Derived from these diets appears what is known as the rebound effect that makes us win, as soon as we leave the diet, as much or more weight as we have lost with it.
Result? Again we have to go on a diet and, thus, we enter a cycle, endless, in which our body and hypothalamus begin to lose sensitivity to leptin, it does not receive the signal of satiety or that of having enough fat and alters our set point, raising it a bit. A little every time we start with a new diet.
Now a new investigation comes to find a new problem to yo-yo diets and to reaffirm those we already knew. Thus, the team of Andrea P. Rossi has found that the realization of yo-yo diets in adults, causing large weight changes on a regular basis, is a risk factor for the loss of muscle mass and a six times higher risk of arriving to suffer from sarcopenia.
This is due, as they indicate, that when losing weight they would lose fat and muscle, but when recovering it they would only do it in the form of fat. So, in the end, an important change in body composition would be generated in which more and more fat and less muscle would be available.
In any case, we must bear in mind that it is a preliminary investigation, with a small sample and with which no cause-effect can be established. However, it does open an interesting path of investigation and puts us on alert, especially in the case of the most vulnerable people to yo-yo diets, such as those suffering from obesity.
