6 Tell-tale Signs You’ve Been Dieting Too Long & Too Hard
If you have any of these symptoms, you need to make a change
When it comes to calorie deficits you can have too much of a good thing.
This means there’s a balance you need to find between too much and not enough. This is called your fat loss sweet spot and is the optimal rate of weight loss.
For most people, this is when they’re losing about 1% of their body weight in pounds per week. However, it varies from person to person and it’s likely you’ll need to adjust as you go to find it.
Ultimately, the goal is to find the rate at which you can consistently lose fat as fast as possible without ramping up the negative side effects and sacrificing your muscle mass.
However, often this is not what happens.
Instead, people jump on the shortcut, crash diet, fad diet trend and go too hard for too long. As a result, the side effects of being in a calorie deficit skyrocket, progress plummets and they quit before they ever had a chance.
In this article, we’re going to look at why dieting can make you feel like crap before covering 6 signs that you’ve been dieting too hard for too long.
How Dieting Makes You Feel Like Crap
When you eat in a calorie deficit you not only lose weight, but you also spark a chain reaction of other processes that conspire against you.
You see, when eating in a calorie deficit you’re intentionally giving your body less energy than it needs. This forces it to use your stored energy (fat and carbs) to function. It also forces it to begin thinking about how it’s going to counteract this prolonged reduction in energy.
The longer you maintain your calorie deficit and the bigger this calorie deficit is the more your body revolts. The result is weight loss, but also several hormonal and metabolic changes that if you’re not aware of can spell the end of your fat loss attempts.
- Your body increases the production of the hunger hormone Ghrelin, making you feel hungrier more of the time (1)
- At the same time, your body decreases the production of the satiety hormone Leptin, making you feel less satisfied after meals (2)
As you can see your body is making internal changes to try and encourage you to eat more and these two hormones, Ghrelin and Leptin, are responsible for the increased hunger you feel when dieting.
However, it doesn’t stop here.
- Your body also reduces non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) which means you conserve more energy by reducing activities like walking and fidgeting which reduces overall calorie burn (3)
- Finally, and most importantly you begin to suffer from adaptive thermogenesis which is the drop in calories burned above and beyond the change expected from your decreasing body weight and reduction in activity (4)
This means not only are you feeling hungrier more of the time but you’re also being less active (whether you realise it or not) and burning progressively fewer calories daily due to metabolic changes in the body.
In short, dieting sucks because your body is actively working against you in an effort to get you to eat more calories and prevent weight loss.
The harder you diet and the longer you diet for the more pronounced these effects are and they can manifest themselves in several ways, including:
#1: Your Sex Drive Disappears
As we’ve seen, your body adapts to being in a calorie deficit by reducing or increasing the production of certain hormones to help manage the increased demand on its resources.
Testosterone, one the big reasons you have a libido, is one of these hormones that get reduced when you’re in a calorie deficit. The bigger the deficit and the longer you’ve been dieting the greater the effect.
To add fuel to the fire a reduced or limited fat intake can also worsen the problem as fat in your diet helps with the production of the sex hormones testosterone and oestrogen. (5)
If you’ve noticed that your sex drive is low or non-existent then it might be time to take a break from dieting. When you do your hormone levels will return to normal and your sex drive will be restored.
#2: You Begin Losing Muscle Mass
Another thing that happens when you diet for too long and too hard is you move from losing fat to losing muscle mass and fat.
This is because by providing your body with too few calories you force it to try and find the energy it needs from both your stored fat and muscle mass. (6) The leaner you are and the longer you’ve been dieting the greater this effect is.
If you’re aiming for the skinny fat look, then this is the fastest way to get there, but seeing as this is exactly what most people want to avoid then you need to be careful with how hard you’re dieting.
If you want to maintain your muscle when losing fat, you need to be using a small to moderate calorie deficit of approximately 500 calories under your maintenance per day. (7, 8)
Then on top of this, you also need to regularly lift weights (2–4 times per week is plenty) in order to give your body a reason to preserve your muscle. (9, 10)
#3: You Find That You’re Always Hungry
We already touched on this earlier when we look at how dieting makes you feel like crap, in case you missed it, this is what you need to know.
When you’re in a calorie deficit a series of metabolic and hormonal changes happen in the body. The longer you’re in a calorie deficit and the bigger it is the worse these changes are.
The reason you always feel so hungry when dieting is largely down to 2 hormones called Ghrelin and Leptin. These hormones are responsible for how hungry you feel and then how satisfied you feel after eating. (11, 12)
With these hormones out of whack, you’ll find it increasingly difficult to manage your hunger the longer and harder you diet.
#4: You Stop Sleeping Well
It’s well established that eating too few calories can mess with your sleep, with research showing how calorie restriction can cause disturbed sleeping patterns and reduce the amount of time you spent in a deep sleep. (13, 14)
If your diet is messing with both the amount and quality of sleep you’re getting, you need to take a long hard look at what you’re doing. This is a big warning sign and a wake-up call that you need to change how you’re doing things.
Additionally, bad sleep quality also affects the regulation of Leptin and Ghrelin, which as we already know leads to an increase in appetite and a greater difficulty managing hunger. (15)
On top of this, it’s been shown that even a small amount of sleep restriction can negatively impact your performance in the gym which has a knock-on effect on how successfully you can lose fat and maintain or even build muscle mass. (16, 17)
#5: You Become Irritable
It’s not uncommon to become irritable and moody when you’ve been dieting too long and/or too hard. Never has this been more evident than during the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, a study conducted during World War II.
It recruited 36 men and subjected them to a period of semi-starvation in order to better understand what physical and psychological effects it has. The purpose of the study was to give them actionable evidence they could use to help the soldiers returning from war regain weight after prolonged periods of semi-starvation on the front lines.
The researchers noted that all participants of the study developed irritability, moodiness and neurological deficits during the experiment. (18)
Ok, I get that this sounds extreme but if you’re doing a 500 calorie or even 1000 calorie diet in the hopes of losing fat fast, then you are putting yourself into semi-starvation and can fully expect to become irritable and moody.
Even if you’re not doing some so drastic you may find yourself quicker tempered the deeper you are into your diet.
#6: You Stop Losing Weight
I thought I’d save the best for last.
That’s right if you diet for too long you could stop losing weight, and before you ask, no it’s not because of starvation mode or any other bullshit like that. Instead, it goes backs to something we discussed earlier and the changes that occur when you start eating in a calorie deficit.
The longer you’re in a calorie deficit and the bigger it is the less NEAT activity you do, remember this is things like fidgeting, use the stairs, etc and can account for a decent amount of your daily calorie burn.
This means if you burn 2,000 calories a day and are eating 1,500 to lose weight, as your NEAT activity begins to diminish you might only be burning 1,700 calories day.
Already your calorie deficit has gone from 500 to 300 calories.
Then as you continue to diet, adaptive thermogenesis kicks in and downregulates your metabolism and you go from burning 1,700 calories a day to 1,500.
Just like that your calorie deficit is gone and you stop losing weight.
Add in the typical mishaps dieters have like under-reporting their food intake, overestimating their calories burned and inaccurately tracking their calories and it’s easy to see how you can gain weight even when you think you’re dieting hard.
