Mythbuster: Yo-yo dieting no deterrent to future weight loss, study reveals

Diet news is never just plain good.Good would be something like “Eating chocolate causes you to lose weight and gain lean muscle mass, study finds.”

The latest, out of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, is not like that.

Yo-yo dieting, researchers have found, actually doesn’t change your metabolism and make it harder to lose weight in future efforts, as widely believed. So just because you’ve lost and gained, lost and gained, lost and gained, you now have no excuses. Do it again. And likely, again.

Dr. Anne McTiernan, of The Hutch’s public health-sciences division, the senior author of the study published online by the journal Metabolism, sees the results as a half-full kind of thing.

“A history of unsuccessful weight loss should not dissuade an individual from future attempts to shed pounds or diminish the role of a healthy diet and regular physical activity in successful weight management,” McTiernan said.

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