Psychological & Physical Effects of Dieting

When dieting, it's important to know the risks. With different diets using different standards, there is no single way to evaluate a diet's potential for negative or positive effects. Dieting improperly can cause nutritional deficiencies, but even with those problems fixed, dieting can often cause unintended effects that last longer than the diet itself.

Stress

• One study in the "Journal of Neuroscience" suggests that yo-yo dieting might have severe negative effects on how the dieter copes with stress. The study involved monitoring mice that were put on a calorie-controlled diet and watching their behavior. Not only did the mice react unfavorably to stressful conditions in the short term, there was also evidence to suggest that this change would continue even after the diet had stopped, making this a long-term consequence of dieting.

  "These results suggest that dieting not only increases stress, making successful dieting more difficult, but that it may actually 'reprogram' how the brain responds to future stress and emotional drives for food," study co-author Tracy Bale of the University of Pennsylvania said.

Skin Damage

• Popular diets such as the Atkins Diet or a raw diet can cause an unbalance in vitamins and minerals if not practiced carefully. This can affect the skin in different ways depending on the diet. The Atkins Diet, for example, can result in a lack of calcium as well as potentially increasing UV vulnerability. A strict vegan diet, which omits protein from animal sources, can cause skin to become dry. In some cases, a supplement regimen might rectify these problems.

Heart Problems

• Some diets, referred to as "crash diets," recommend a very low intake of calories every day. This can cause rapid weight loss, but this can harm the body's metabolism, which can result in future weight gain. Following such a strict diet for long periods of time, or doing it more than once, can have severe ramifications on the heart, including a loss of muscle mass. This kind of dieting can result in a higher risk of heart disease by causing so much damage.

Body Image

• More than one study has shown that obesity in children and young adults is rising. This has had the effect of encouraging many young people to diet. This in itself, however, can trigger body image issues and anxiety that can lead to such extreme eating disorders as anorexia, bulimia or overeating. Even without these disorders, it can create a dieting habit that can cause negative body image issues as well as severe health problems.