How can I stop using food to cope with negative emotions?

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Have you ever noticed changes in your eating habits when you are sad, bored or anxious?

Many people report eating either more, or less, as a way of helping them to cope when they experience difficult emotions.

Although this is a very normal response, it can take the pleasure out of eating, and can become distressing and bring about other feelings of shame and self-criticism.

Adding to the complexity of it all, we live in a world where diet culture is unavoidable, and our relationship to eating, food and body image can become complicated and confusing.

Drazen Zigic/Shutterstock

Emotional eating is common

“Emotional eating” refers to the eating behaviours (typically eating more) that occur in response to difficult emotions.

Research shows around 20% of people regularly engage in emotional eating, with a higher prevalence among adolescents and women. In a study of more than 1,500 adolescents, 34% engaged in emotional eating while sad and 40% did so while anxious.

Foods consumed are often fast-foods and other energy-dense, nutrient-poor convenience foods.

Stress, strong emotions and depression

For some people, emotional eating was simply a habit formed earlier in life that has persisted over time.

But other factors might also contribute to the likelihood of emotional eating. The physiological effects of stress and strong emotions, for example, can influence hormones such as cortisol, insulin and glucose, which can also increase appetite.

Increased impulsivity (behaving before thinking things through), vulnerability to depression, a tendency to ruminate and difficulties regulating emotions also increase the likelihood of emotional eating.

Man stands in kitchenette
Depression increases the likelihood of emotional eating. TommyStockProject/Shutterstock

So what do you do?

First, know that fluctuations in eating are normal. However, if you find that the way you eat in response to difficult emotions is not working for you, there are a few things you can do.

Starting with small things that are achievable but can have a huge impact, such as prioritising getting enough sleep and eating regularly.

Then, you can start to think about how you handle your emotions and hunger cues.

Expand your emotional awareness

Often we label emotions as good or bad, and this can result in fear, avoidance, and unhelpful coping strategies such as emotional eating.

But it’s also important to differentiate the exact emotion. This might be feeling isolated, powerless or victimised, rather than something as broad as sad.

By noticing what the emotion is, we can bring curiosity to what it means, how we feel in our minds and bodies, and how we think and behave in response.

Tap into your feelings of hunger and fullness

Developing an intuitive way of eating is another helpful strategy to promote healthy eating behaviours.

Intuitive eating means recognising, understanding and responding to internal signals of hunger and fullness. This might mean tuning in to and acknowledging physical hunger cues, responding by eating food that is nourishing and enjoyable, and identifying sensations of fullness.

Intuitive eating encourages flexibility and thinking about the pleasure we get from food and eating. This style of eating also allows us to enjoy eating out with friends, and sample local delicacies when travelling.

It can also reduce the psychological distress from feeling out of control with your eating habits and the associated negative body image.

Friends eat dinner out
Try to be flexible in thinking about the pleasure of food and eating with friends. La Famiglia/Shutterstock

When is it time to seek help?

For some people, the thoughts and behaviours relating to food, eating and body image can negatively impact their life.

Having the support of friends and family, accessing online resources and, in some instances, seeing a trained professional, can be very helpful.

There are many therapeutic interventions that work to improve aspects associated with emotional eating. These will depend on your situation, needs, stage of life and other factors, such as whether you are neurodivergent.

The best approach is to engage with someone who can bring compassion and understanding to your personal situation, and work with you collaboratively. This work might include:

  • unpacking some of the patterns that could be underlying these emotions, thoughts and behaviours
  • helping you to discover your emotions
  • supporting you to process other experiences, such as trauma exposure
  • developing a more flexible and intuitive way of eating.

One of the dangers that can occur in response to emotional eating is the temptation to diet, which can lead to disordered eating, and eating disorder behaviours. Indicators of a potential eating disorder can include:

  • recent rapid weight loss
  • preoccupation with weight and shape (which is usually in contrast to other people’s perceptions)
  • eating large amounts of food within a short space of time (two hours or less) and feeling a sense of loss of control
  • eating in secret
  • compensating for food eaten (with vomiting, exercise or laxatives).

Evidence-based approaches can support people experiencing eating disorders. To find a health professional who is informed and specialises in this area, search the Butterfly Foundation’s expert database.


If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14, or the Butterfly Foundation on 1800 ED HOPE (1800 33 4673).

Inge Gnatt, PhD Candidate, Lecturer in Psychology, Swinburne University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • Paving The Way To Good Health

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    This is Dr. Michelle Tollefson. She’s a gynecologist, and a menopause and lifestyle medicine expert. She’s also a breast cancer survivor, and, indeed, thriver.

    So, what does she want us to know?

    A Multivector Approach To Health

    There’s a joke that goes: a man is trapped in a flooding area, and as the floodwaters rise, he gets worried and begins to pray, but he is interrupted when some people come by on a raft and offer him to go with them. He looks at the rickety raft and says “No, you go on, God will spare me”. He returns to his prayer, and is further interrupted by a boat and finally a helicopter, and each time he gives the same response. He drowns, and in the afterlife he asks God “why didn’t you spare me from the flood?”, and God replies “I sent a raft, a boat, and a helicopter; what more did you want?!”

    People can be a bit the same when it comes to different approaches to cancer and other serious illness. They are offered chemotherapy and say “No, thank you, eating fruit will spare me”.

    Now, this is not to trivialize those who decline aggressive cancer treatments for other reasons such as “I am old and would rather not go through that; I’d rather have a shorter life without chemo than a longer life with it”—for many people that’s a valid choice.

    But it is to say: lifestyle medicine is, mostly, complementary medicine.

    It can be very powerful! It can make the difference between life and death! Especially when it comes to things like cancer, diabetes, heart disease, etc.

    But it’s not a reason to decline powerful medical treatments if/when those are appropriate. For example, in Dr. Tollefson’s case…

    Synergistic health

    Dr. Tollefson, herself a lifestyle medicine practitioner and gynecologist (and having thus done thousands of clinical breast exams for other people, screening for breast cancer), says she owes her breast cancer survival to two things, or rather two categories of things:

    1. a whole-food, plant predominant diet, daily physical activity, prioritizing sleep, minimizing stress, and a strong social network
    2. a bilateral mastectomy, 16 rounds of chemotherapy, removal of her ovaries, and several reconstructive surgeries

    Now, one may wonder: if the first thing is so good, why need the second?

    Or on the flipside: if the second thing was necessary, what was the point of the first?

    And the answer she gives is: the first thing was the reason she was able to make it through the second thing.

    And on the next level: the second thing was the reason she’s still around to talk about the first thing.

    In other words: she couldn’t have done it with just one or the other.

    A lot of medicine in general, and lifestyle medicine in particular, is like this. If we note that such-and-such a thing decreases our risk of cancer mortality by 4%, that’s a small decrease, but it can add up (and compound!) if it’s surrounded by other things that also each decrease the risk by 12%, 8%, 15%, and so on.

    Nor is this only confined to cancer, nor only to the positives.

    Let’s take cardiovascular disease: if a person smokes, drinks, eats red meat, stresses, and has a wild sleep schedule, you can imagine those risk factors add up and compound.

    If this person and another with a heart-healthy lifestyle both have a stroke (it can happen to anyone, even if it’s less likely in this case), and both need treatment, then two things are true:

    • They are both still going to need treatment (medicines, and possibly a thrombectomy)
    • The second person is most likely to recover, and most likely to recover more quickly and easily

    The second person can be said to have paved the way to their recovery, with their lifestyle.

    Which is really important, because a lot of people think “what’s the point in living so healthily if [disease] strikes anyway?” and the answer is:

    A very large portion of your recovery is predicated on how you lived your life before The Bad Thing™ happened, and that can be the difference between bouncing back quickly and a long struggle back to health.

    Or the difference between a long struggle back to health, or a short struggle followed by rapid decline and death.

    In short:

    Play the odds, improve your chances with lifestyle medicine. Enjoy those cancer-fighting fruits:

    Top 8 Fruits That Prevent & Kill Cancer

    …but also, get your various bits checked when appropriate; we know, mammograms and prostate checks etc are not usually the highlight of most people’s days, but they save lives. And if it turns out you need serious medical interventions, consider them seriously.

    And, by all means, enjoy mood-boosting nutraceuticals such as:

    12 Foods That Fight Depression & Anxiety

    …but also recognize that sometimes, your brain might have an ongoing biochemical problem that a tablespoon of pumpkin seeds isn’t going to fix.

    And absolutely, you can make lifestyle adjustments to reduce the risks associated with menopause, for example:

    Menopause, & How Lifestyle Continues To Matter “Postmenopause”

    …but also be aware that if the problem is “not enough estrogen”, sometimes to solution is “take estrogen”.

    And so on.

    Want to know Dr. Tollefson’s lifestyle recommendations?

    Most of them will not be a surprise to you, and we mentioned some of them above (a whole-food, plant predominant diet, daily physical activity, prioritizing sleep, minimizing stress, and a strong social network), but for more specific recommendations, including numbers etc, enjoy:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

    Take care!

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  • Food Fix – by Dr. Mark Hyman

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    On a simplistic level, “eat more plants, but ideally not monocrops, and definitely fewer animals” is respectable, ecologically-aware advice that is also consistent with good health. But it is a simplification, and perhaps an oversimplification.

    Is there space on a healthy, ecologically sound plate for animal products? Yes, argues Dr. Mark Hyman. It’s a small space, but it’s there.

    For example, some kinds of fish are both healthier and more sustainable as a food source than others, same goes for some kinds of dairy products. Poultry, too, can be farmed sustainably in a way that promotes a small self-contained ecosystem—and in terms of health, consumption of poultry appears to be health-neutral at worst.

    As this book explores:

    • Oftentimes, food choices look like: healthy/sustainable/cheap (choose one).
    • Dr. Hyman shows how in fact, we can have it more like: healthy/sustainable/cheap (choose two).
    • He argues that if more people “vote with their fork”, production will continue to adjust accordingly, and we’ll get: healthy/sustainable/cheap (all three).

    To this end, while some parts of the book can feel like they are purely academic (pertaining less to what we can do as individuals, and more on what governments, farming companies, etc can do), it’s good to know what issues we might also take to the ballot box, if we’re able.

    The big picture aside, the book remains very strong even just from an individual health perspective, though.

    Bottom line: if you have an interest in preserving your own health, and possibly humanity itself, this is an excellent book.

    Click here to check out Food Fix, and level-up yours!

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  • Patient Underwent One Surgery but Was Billed for Two. Even After Being Sued, She Refused To Pay.

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Jamie Holmes says a surgery center tried to make her pay for two operations after she underwent only one. She refused to buckle, even after a collection agency sued her last winter.

    Holmes, who lives in northwestern Washington state, had surgery in 2019 to have her fallopian tubes tied, a permanent birth-control procedure that her insurance company agreed ahead of time to cover.

    During the operation, while Holmes was under anesthesia, the surgeon noticed early signs of endometriosis, a common condition in which fibrous scar tissue grows around the uterus, Holmes said. She said the surgeon later told her he spent about 15 minutes cauterizing the troublesome tissue as a precaution. She recalls him saying he finished the whole operation within the 60 minutes that had been allotted for the tubal ligation procedure alone.

    She said the doctor assured her the extra treatment for endometriosis would cost her little, if anything.

    Then the bill came.

    The Patient: Jamie Holmes, 38, of Lynden, Washington, who was insured by Premera Blue Cross at the time.

    Medical Services: A tubal ligation operation, plus treatment of endometriosis found during the surgery.

    Service Provider: Pacific Rim Outpatient Surgery Center of Bellingham, Washington, which has since been purchased, closed, and reopened under a new name.

    Total Bill: $9,620. Insurance paid $1,262 to the in-network center. After adjusting for prices allowed under the insurer’s contract, the center billed Holmes $2,605. A collection agency later acquired the debt and sued her for $3,792.19, including interest and fees.

    What Gives: The surgery center, which provided the facility and support staff for her operation, sent a bill suggesting that Holmes underwent two separate operations, one to have her tubes tied and one to treat endometriosis. It charged $4,810 for each.

    Holmes said there were no such problems with the separate bills from the surgeon and anesthesiologist, which the insurer paid.

    Holmes figured someone in the center’s billing department mistakenly thought she’d been on the operating table twice. She said she tried to explain it to the staff, to no avail.

    She said it was as if she ordered a meal at a fast-food restaurant, was given extra fries, and then was charged for two whole meals. “I didn’t get the extra burger and drink and a toy,” she joked.

    Her insurer, Premera Blue Cross, declined to pay for two operations, she said. The surgery center billed Holmes for much of the difference. She refused to pay.

    Holmes said she understands the surgery center could have incurred additional costs for the approximately 15 minutes the surgeon spent cauterizing the spots of endometriosis. About $500 would have seemed like a fair charge to her. “I’m not opposed to paying for that,” she said. “I am opposed to paying for a whole bunch of things I didn’t receive.”

    The physician-owned surgery center was later purchased and closed by PeaceHealth, a regional health system. But the debt was turned over to a collection agency, SB&C, which filed suit against Holmes in December 2023, seeking $3,792.19, including interest and fees.

    The collection agency asked a judge to grant summary judgment, which could have allowed the company to garnish wages from Holmes’ job as a graphic artist and marketing specialist for real estate agents.

    Holmes said she filed a written response, then showed up on Zoom and at the courthouse for two hearings, during which she explained her side, without bringing a lawyer. The judge ruled in February that the collection agency was not entitled to summary judgment, because the facts of the case were in dispute.

    More From Bill Of The Month

    Representatives of the collection agency and the defunct surgery center declined to comment for this article.

    Sabrina Corlette, co-director of Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms, said it was absurd for the surgery center to bill for two operations and then refuse to back down when the situation was explained. “It’s like a Kafka novel,” she said.

    Corlette said surgery center staffers should be accustomed to such scenarios. “It is quite common, I would think, for a surgeon to look inside somebody and say, ‘Oh, there’s this other thing going on. I’m going to deal with it while I’ve got the patient on the operating table.’”

    It wouldn’t have made medical or financial sense for the surgeon to make Holmes undergo a separate operation for the secondary issue, she said.

    Corlette said that if the surgery center was still in business, she would advise the patient to file a complaint with state regulators.

    The Resolution: So far, the collection agency has not pressed ahead with its lawsuit by seeking a trial after the judge’s ruling. Holmes said that if the agency continues to sue her over the debt, she might hire a lawyer and sue them back, seeking damages and attorney fees.

    She could have arranged to pay off the amount in installments. But she’s standing on principle, she said.

    “I just got stonewalled so badly. They treated me like an idiot,” she said. “If they’re going to be petty to me, I’m willing to be petty right back.”

    The Takeaway: Don’t be afraid to fight a bogus medical bill, even if the dispute goes to court.

    Debt collectors often seek summary judgment, which allows them to garnish wages or take other measures to seize money without going to the trouble of proving in a trial that they are entitled to payments. If the consumers being sued don’t show up to tell their side in court hearings, judges often grant summary judgment to the debt collectors.

    However, if the facts of a case are in dispute — for example, because the defendant shows up and argues she owes for just one surgery, not two — the judge may deny summary judgment and send the case to trial. That forces the debt collector to choose: spend more time and money pursuing the debt or drop it.

    “You know what? It pays to be stubborn in situations like this,” said Berneta Haynes, a senior attorney for the National Consumer Law Center who reviewed Holmes’ bill for KFF Health News.

    Many people don’t go to such hearings, sometimes because they didn’t get enough notice, don’t read English, or don’t have time, she said.

    “I think a lot of folks just cave” after they’re sued, Haynes said.

    Emily Siner reported the audio story.

    After six years, we’ll have a final installment with NPR of our Bill of the Month project in the fall. But Bill of the Month will continue at KFF Health News and elsewhere. We still want to hear about your confusing or outrageous medical bills. Visit Bill of the Month to share your story.

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

    Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.

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  • Fasting Cancer – by Dr. Valter Longo

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    We’ve previously reviewed Dr. Longo’s “The Longevity Diet”, and whereas that one was about eating, this one is (superficially, at least) about not eating. Nor is this any kind of dissonance, because, in fact, it’s important to do both!

    That said, he discusses not just fasting per se, but also the use of a personalized fast-mimicking diet, to accomplish the same goal of not overloading the metabolism—as overloading the metabolism results in metabolic disease, and cancer is, ultimately, a metabolic disease of immune dysfunction with genetic disorder*—which makes for quite a deadly trifecta.

    *not in the sense of “hereditary”, though certainly genes can influence cancer risk, but rather, in the sense of “your gene-copying process becomes disordered”.

    The first three chapters (after the introduction, which we’ll comment on shortly) are devoted to explaining the principles at hand:

    1. Fasting cancer while feeding patients
    2. Genes, aging, and cancer
    3. Fasting, nutrition, and physical activity in cancer prevention

    In those chapters, he details a lot of the science for exactly how and why it is possible to “feed the patient and starve the cancer” at the same time.

    After that, the rest of the book—another nine chapters, not counting appendices etc—are given over to fasting and nutrition in the context of nine main types of cancer, one chapter per type. These are not hyperspecific, though, and are rather categorizations, such as “blood cancers”, and “gynecological cancers” and so forth. It’s comprehensive, and while it could be argued that it may mean chapters feel irrelevant to some people (à la “I have never smoked and have no pressing concern about my lung cancer risk” etc), the reality is that it’s good to know how to avoid them all, because if nothing else, it’d be super embarrassing to get a cancer you “thought you couldn’t get”. So, it’s honestly worth the time to read each chapter.

    In the category of criticism, he did open the introduction with a handful of anecdotes to defend the consumption of (well-established group 1 carcinogens) red meat and alcohol as “secondary concerns that might not be such a big deal”, even discussing how surprised his colleagues in the field are that he has this view. Suffice it to say, it’s contrary to the overwhelming body of evidence, and reads suspiciously like a man who simply doesn’t want to give up his steak and wine despite his own longevity diet forswearing them.

    The style is self-indulgently autobiographical and very complimentary, and (in this reviewer’s opinion) it can be tedious to wade through that to get to the science, but at the end of the day, his self-accolades might be needless fluff, but they don’t actually remove anything from the science in question.

    Bottom line: as you can see, there are good and bad things to say about this book, but the information contained in the good makes it well worth reading through the stylistically questionable to get it.

    Click here to check out Fasting Cancer, and starve cancer cells while nourishing your healthy ones!

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  • 9 Reasons To Avoid Mobility Training

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Why might someone not want to do mobility training? Here are some important reasons:

    Make an informed choice

    Here’s Liv’s hit-list of reasons to skip mobility training:

    • Poor Circulation: Avoid mobility training if you don’t want to improve or maintain good blood circulation, which aids muscle recovery and reduces soreness.
    • Low Energy Levels: Mobility training increases oxygen flow to the brain and muscles, boosting energy. Skip it if you prefer feeling sluggish!
    • Digestive Health: Stretches that rotate the torso aid digestion and relieve bloating. Definitely best to avoid it if you’re uninterested in improving digestive health.
    • Joint Health: Mobility work stimulates synovial fluid production, reducing joint friction and promoting longevity. You can skip it if you don’t care about comfortable movement.
    • Sleep Quality: Gentle stretching triggers relaxation, aiding restful sleep. Avoid it if you enjoy restless nights!
    • Pain Tolerance: Stretching trains the nervous system to handle discomfort better. Skip it if you prefer suffering 🙂
    • Headache Reduction: Mobility work relieves tension in the neck and shoulders, reducing the occurrence and severity of headaches. No need to do it if you’re fine with frequent headaches.
    • Immune System Support: Mobility training boosts lymphatic circulation, aiding the immune system. Avoid it if you prefer your immune system to get exciting in a bad way.
    • Stress Reduction: Mobility exercises release endorphins and lower cortisol levels, reducing stress. So, it is certainly best to skip it if you prefer feeling stressed and enjoy the many harmful symptoms of high cortisol levels!

    For more on all of these, enjoy:

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    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    Mobility As Though A Sporting Pursuit: Train For The Event Of Your Life!

    Take care!

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  • 3 signs your diet is causing too much muscle loss – and what to do about it

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    When trying to lose weight, it’s natural to want to see quick results. So when the number on the scales drops rapidly, it seems like we’re on the right track.

    But as with many things related to weight loss, there’s a flip side: rapid weight loss can result in a significant loss of muscle mass, as well as fat.

    So how you can tell if you’re losing too much muscle and what can you do to prevent it?

    EvMedvedeva/Shutterstock

    Why does muscle mass matter?

    Muscle is an important factor in determining our metabolic rate: how much energy we burn at rest. This is determined by how much muscle and fat we have. Muscle is more metabolically active than fat, meaning it burns more calories.

    When we diet to lose weight, we create a calorie deficit, where our bodies don’t get enough energy from the food we eat to meet our energy needs. Our bodies start breaking down our fat and muscle tissue for fuel.

    A decrease in calorie-burning muscle mass slows our metabolism. This quickly slows the rate at which we lose weight and impacts our ability to maintain our weight long term.

    How to tell you’re losing too much muscle

    Unfortunately, measuring changes in muscle mass is not easy.

    The most accurate tool is an enhanced form of X-ray called a dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) scan. The scan is primarily used in medicine and research to capture data on weight, body fat, muscle mass and bone density.

    But while DEXA is becoming more readily available at weight-loss clinics and gyms, it’s not cheap.

    There are also many “smart” scales available for at home use that promise to provide an accurate reading of muscle mass percentage.

    Woman stands on scales
    Some scales promise to tell us our muscle mass. Lee Charlie/Shutterstock

    However, the accuracy of these scales is questionable. Researchers found the scales tested massively over- or under-estimated fat and muscle mass.

    Fortunately, there are three free but scientifically backed signs you may be losing too much muscle mass when you’re dieting.

    1. You’re losing much more weight than expected each week

    Losing a lot of weight rapidly is one of the early signs that your diet is too extreme and you’re losing too much muscle.

    Rapid weight loss (of more than 1 kilogram per week) results in greater muscle mass loss than slow weight loss.

    Slow weight loss better preserves muscle mass and often has the added benefit of greater fat mass loss.

    One study compared people in the obese weight category who followed either a very low-calorie diet (500 calories per day) for five weeks or a low-calorie diet (1,250 calories per day) for 12 weeks. While both groups lost similar amounts of weight, participants following the very low-calorie diet (500 calories per day) for five weeks lost significantly more muscle mass.

    2. You’re feeling tired and things feel more difficult

    It sounds obvious, but feeling tired, sluggish and finding it hard to complete physical activities, such as working out or doing jobs around the house, is another strong signal you’re losing muscle.

    Research shows a decrease in muscle mass may negatively impact your body’s physical performance.

    3. You’re feeling moody

    Mood swings and feeling anxious, stressed or depressed may also be signs you’re losing muscle mass.

    Research on muscle loss due to ageing suggests low levels of muscle mass can negatively impact mental health and mood. This seems to stem from the relationship between low muscle mass and proteins called neurotrophins, which help regulate mood and feelings of wellbeing.

    So how you can do to maintain muscle during weight loss?

    Fortunately, there are also three actions you can take to maintain muscle mass when you’re following a calorie-restricted diet to lose weight.

    1. Incorporate strength training into your exercise plan

    While a broad exercise program is important to support overall weight loss, strength-building exercises are a surefire way to help prevent the loss of muscle mass. A meta-analysis of studies of older people with obesity found resistance training was able to prevent almost 100% of muscle loss from calorie restriction.

    Relying on diet alone to lose weight will reduce muscle along with body fat, slowing your metabolism. So it’s essential to make sure you’ve incorporated sufficient and appropriate exercise into your weight-loss plan to hold onto your muscle mass stores.

    Woman uses weights at the gym
    Strength-building exercises help you retain muscle. BearFotos/Shutterstock

    But you don’t need to hit the gym. Exercises using body weight – such as push-ups, pull-ups, planks and air squats – are just as effective as lifting weights and using strength-building equipment.

    Encouragingly, moderate-volume resistance training (three sets of ten repetitions for eight exercises) can be as effective as high-volume training (five sets of ten repetitions for eight exercises) for maintaining muscle when you’re following a calorie-restricted diet.

    2. Eat more protein

    Foods high in protein play an essential role in building and maintaining muscle mass, but research also shows these foods help prevent muscle loss when you’re following a calorie-restricted diet.

    But this doesn’t mean just eating foods with protein. Meals need to be balanced and include a source of protein, wholegrain carb and healthy fat to meet our dietary needs. For example, eggs on wholegrain toast with avocado.

    3. Slow your weight loss plan down

    When we change our diet to lose weight, we take our body out of its comfort zone and trigger its survival response. It then counteracts weight loss, triggering several physiological responses to defend our body weight and “survive” starvation.

    Our body’s survival mechanisms want us to regain lost weight to ensure we survive the next period of famine (dieting). Research shows that more than half of the weight lost by participants is regained within two years, and more than 80% of lost weight is regained within five years.

    However, a slow and steady, stepped approach to weight loss, prevents our bodies from activating defence mechanisms to defend our weight when we try to lose weight.

    Ultimately, losing weight long-term comes down to making gradual changes to your lifestyle to ensure you form habits that last a lifetime.

    At the Boden Group, Charles Perkins Centre, we are studying the science of obesity and running clinical trials for weight loss. You can register here to express your interest.

    Nick Fuller, Charles Perkins Centre Research Program Leader, University of Sydney

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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