Negative Effects of Diets

Jasbina Ahluwalia asks Dr. Jason Beeharilal, Founder of Premier Wellness Associates, LLC: The hot oil will be a band-aid for a deeper underlying need. Speaking of love handles, weight loss is one of the most common New Year’s resolutions.

There is a new diet strategy popping up almost every day. I understand that you have insights to share with us as to why the latest diet craze may pose more harm than good. Dr. Beeharilal, please tell us about that.

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Dr. Jason Beeharilal

Negative Effects of Diets: Starvation

I’m glad we brought that up. I was very excited when we came up with the topics.

It’s damage control. No one is born overweight. No one is born 200 pounds or more. No one is born not seeing their toes in the past five years.

They say, “Oh my God. I have to go for this or that.” Most of these diets are fads. Most of them are phases. Most of them involve starvation of some sort. That’s counterproductive.

Starvation is a state that induces your body to save more.

Negative Effects of Diets: Analogy

I analogize it for my clients in terms of, if I were to give you a lump sum of money and say, “Here is your salary for the year, all at once right now,” you probably wouldn’t want to buy luxuries with it.

You probably wouldn’t want to budget too much with that lump sum until you knew you could buy all the things that you needed to buy.

By the time you buy everything that you need, you’ve already stored the rest in the bank account. We’re getting back to the bank account. We don’t want to talk about those areas.

Conversely, if you give yourself a constant paycheck of X amount that equals the same amount as the lump sum per year, it’s easily budgeted to buy the luxuries that you need or want. The luxuries for the body are things like hair, skin and nails.

Negative Effects of Diets: Fads

Getting back to the diet, if you look at most of these starvation or fad diets, whether you’re talking about the clam chowder diet or something else, it is calories in, calories out.

Negative Effects of Diets: You Lose

You’re take in less calories. Yes, you will lose weight eventually. But what are we losing?

We’re losing muscle.

We’re losing bone density.

We’re losing protein.

We’re losing the healthy fats.

We’re also losing the fat that we don’t want. When you’re done, you usually end up going back to a state worse off than you were before.

Negative Effects of Diets: Hormonal Changes

The yo-yo dieting results in hormonal changes. They result in a resistance for your body to burn that fat off.

Your body says, “I don’t know where the next meal is going to come from so I have to make sure I’m really stingy about maintaining my stores. I want to make it really hard for me to burn my stores up because I don’t know where it’s coming from. I can’t afford to starve.” That’s part of how we sabotage.

The other way is via cortisol, which is one of the hormonal changes that I was talking about.

There are a few, but one of the main ones is cortisol. You’re putting your body into a stressful state.

Any change in the body, when done too drastically, can be stressful. It uses some cortisol. Some cortisol is good. It’s not your enemy.

The enemy is the super-physiologic levels of cortisol.

Negative Effects of Diets: Resistance

When we’re starving too much and making changes that the body is not used to, it is resistant.

It’s like Newton’s Law. That’s the problem.

Cortisol increases your glucose.

It increases your blood pressure.

It increases the body’s tendency towards retaining salt.

For the women especially, you know what retaining salt and water means. It’s a vicious cycle. The more weight gain you notice, the more you want to diet. Then the diets fail.

Negative Effects of Diets: Psychology

Psychologically you say, “Forget this diet mess. I tried everything. I’m just going to go for liposuction or bariatric surgery. I need one of the quick fixes. I’m going to get Dr. B. to laser it off.”

Those things are band-aids, like you said. They are band-aids over a very large abscess that can easily be drained by nice, slow changes that are very regulated.

Negative Effects of Diets: Balance

I tell my clients, “We’re going to walk through this. We’re going to increase your protein levels so that you’re not starving.” I did say “increase.”

People will say, “Wait a minute. I’m not trying to gain weight.”

I say, “I know that. But we’re going to fill those fuel tanks full of quality fuel as opposed to filler. Instead of fiberglass, we’re going to use some good stuff here.”