Why restriction keeps leading back to rebound eating, why it gets louder before Christmas, holidays and big events, and how to step out of it and into a kinder, lasting relationship with food and your body.
Have you noticed how diet articles arrive like clockwork? Recently I spotted two on the same day in one online newspaper, both offering tips to lose weight before Christmas. In January we'll be bombarded with advice on shifting the holiday weight, and by spring it'll be the countdown to the beach.
The timing is no accident. Weight loss is big business: the global weight loss market was valued at almost US$300 billion in 2024, according to ResearchAndMarkets, and it's forecast to double by 2033.
Here's the uncomfortable bit: much of this industry relies on diets not lasting. You'll often hear that 95 per cent of diets fail. That figure traces back to a small 1959 study of 100 patients by psychiatrist Albert Stunkard, and more recent reviews put long-term success at somewhere between one in ten and one in three.
Whichever number you go by, most dieters regain the weight, and the diet companies have long known it. Richard Samber, a former chief financial officer of Weight Watchers, told The Guardian that 84 per cent of customers failed on their diets and came back to try again. "That's where your business comes from," he said.
Now we have the GLP-1 craze. Weight loss injections such as Mounjaro and Wegovy have changed things for some people, and for those with serious health risks they can be a valuable medical tool. But they're expensive, and they aren't without risk. In September 2025, Eli Lilly raised the UK list price of the highest dose of Mounjaro from £122 to £330 a month. Nausea, vomiting and constipation are common side effects, and in June 2025 the UK medicines regulator, the MHRA, reported 181 suspected cases of pancreatitis linked to Mounjaro, including five deaths. Reports like these don't prove the drug was the cause, but they were serious enough for the MHRA to launch research into whether genetics play a part.
The injections also don't change the reasons we eat. A University of Oxford review published in The BMJ in January 2026, covering 37 studies and more than 9,000 people, found that once people stopped weight loss medication they regained weight at around 0.4kg a month. That's almost four times faster than after diet and exercise programmes, with all of the lost weight projected to return within about two years.
Of course, there are success stories, and I'm genuinely glad for every one of them. But if you've lost the same stone several times over, it may be time to ask a different question. Not "which diet next?" but "why do I keep ending up here?" And, just as importantly, "what would it feel like to stop fighting my body altogether?"
I ask that question from experience. The yo-yo of losing weight and gaining it back is something I've been through myself: the hopeful start, the rules, the slip, the guilt and the promise to try harder next time. So when I write about the diet cycle, it isn't something I've only studied. I know how exhausting it is, and I know how much lighter life feels when you finally step out of it.
A client once described her eating to me as "living in instalments". She'd be "good" from Monday, lose a few pounds by the end of the month, and feel in control. Then a hard week at work, a family birthday or a long weekend away would tip everything over. By Sunday night she was promising herself a fresh start, and the whole cycle began again. She was a senior lawyer, organised and capable in every other area of her life, and she couldn't understand why this one thing kept defeating her.
If that sounds familiar, it's more common than you may realise. What she was describing has a name: the diet cycle, sometimes called the diet-rebound cycle. And once you understand how it works, and why it tends to tighten its grip at certain times of year, it gets far easier to step out of it.
What is the diet cycle?
The diet cycle is a repeating loop of restriction and rebound. It usually has five stages, and each one feeds the next.
1. Negative thoughts
Very few diets begin from a place of feeling good about yourself. They tend to start with a critical moment: a photo you dislike, jeans that feel tight, a comment from someone, or a quiet voice that says you have let yourself go again. The diet becomes the solution to the feeling, not just the body.
2. Restriction
Next come the rules. No carbs after six. Nothing sweet. 1,000 calories, or two shakes and a "sensible" dinner. The rules feel reassuring at first because they promise control.
3. Deprivation
Over days or weeks, the body and mind respond to the shortage. Food becomes more interesting, more noticeable, more emotionally charged. Willpower thins, especially when you're tired, stressed or lonely.
4. Rebound or binge eating
Eventually a rule gets crossed. One biscuit becomes the packet, because the day is "ruined" anyway. This isn't weakness. As you'll see below, it's a predictable response to restriction that researchers have studied for decades.
5. Shame
Then comes the guilt, the self-criticism and the promise to try harder. And shame leads straight back to stage one: negative thoughts, and a new, stricter diet. The loop closes, and each time around it can feel a little heavier.
Why the diet cycle intensifies at certain times of year
The cycle rarely runs at a steady pace. For many of my clients it has a rhythm, speeding up around particular dates and pressures.
After Christmas and New Year
January is the high season of dieting, and the data shows why the pressure builds. Researchers led by Elina Helander at Tampere University of Technology tracked the daily weight of almost 3,000 adults in the United States, Germany and Japan using wireless scales, publishing their findings in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2016. Weight rose in all three countries in the ten days after Christmas, and while up to half of that gain was lost fairly quickly, the rest tended to linger into the summer months. The gain itself was modest, but the emotional response to it often isn't. Many women spend December in a "might as well" mindset, knowing the restriction is coming, and then start January with the harshest rules of the year.
Before a beach holiday
Spring brings a second peak. The "summer body" countdown turns a holiday into a deadline, and deadlines invite crash diets. The trouble is that the holiday itself then becomes the rebound, followed by shame on the flight home.
Weddings, milestones and big events
A wedding, a significant birthday, a reunion or a work event where you'll be photographed can trigger the most extreme cycles of all. A Cornell study by Lori Neighbors and Jeffery Sobal of 272 engaged women found that more than 70 per cent wanted to lose weight before their wedding. Among those hoping to lose weight, 40 per cent used at least one extreme weight-control method. That's a very clear picture of how an event with emotional weight attached can tighten the cycle.
Stress and major life events
Divorce, bereavement, redundancy, moving country, caring for a parent, and the hormonal shifts of perimenopause and menopause can all set the cycle spinning. Stress pushes us towards comfort eating, and then the diet is meant to "fix" what the eating did. But restriction is a stressor in itself. In a 2010 study published in Psychosomatic Medicine, A. Janet Tomiyama and colleagues randomly assigned 121 women to different eating plans for three weeks. Restricting calories increased the women's total cortisol output, and simply monitoring calories increased how stressed they felt. So the very tool used to cope with stress can quietly add to it.
When it isn't only the cycle: health and hormones
Not everything comes down to the diet cycle, and I don't want you to feel that it does. Here are a few things to keep in mind:
Hormones and health can play a part. Weight and appetite can also be affected by hormones (including perimenopause and menopause), thyroid problems, PCOS, some medications, poor sleep and long-term stress.
It works alongside the emotional side. This doesn't replace the emotional side. It works alongside it, and the cycle often builds on top of a real physical change.
Speak to your GP first if something is new. If your weight or appetite has changed suddenly, or your symptoms are new, please speak to your GP first.
What causes the diet cycle?
The diet cycle has three layers: the body, the mind, and the beliefs underneath both.
The body: restriction creates hunger, not discipline
One of the best-known studies on this is the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, led by physiologist Ancel Keys in 1944 and 1945. Thirty-six healthy young men followed a semi-starvation diet for six months. They became preoccupied with food, collected recipes, grew irritable and low, and several struggled with episodes of overeating once food was reintroduced. These were mentally healthy volunteers, not people with a history of emotional eating. Their bodies were simply doing what bodies are designed to do when food is scarce.
The mind: the "what the hell" effect
Psychologists C. Peter Herman and Janet Polivy at the University of Toronto spent years studying dieters, and found that people who restrict their eating often respond to a small "slip" by eating far more than people who don't diet at all. Polivy called this the "what the hell" effect: once a rule is crossed, the thinking becomes all or nothing, and the rest of the day, week or holiday is written off. The rigidity of the rules is part of what drives the rebound.
The roots: what the food is doing for you
Beneath both of these sits the most important layer. For many women, food is doing a job. It soothes, numbs, rewards, fills a gap or offers a few minutes of comfort at the end of a long day of looking after everyone else. And the diet is often doing a job too. It offers a sense of control, or a feeling of earning approval, or a belief that life will begin properly once the weight is gone.
These patterns usually begin early. A child who was given sweets when she was upset learns that food means comfort. A teenager who heard her mother criticising her own body learns that a woman's worth is measured in pounds. A girl praised for being "good" when she left food on her plate learns that hunger is something to override. None of this is conscious. But until it's understood, no diet can hold, because a diet only ever addresses the surface. The research reflects this.
When Traci Mann and her colleagues at UCLA reviewed 31 long-term diet studies for American Psychologist in 2007, they found that between one third and two thirds of dieters regained more weight than they had lost within four to five years. As Mann put it, this was not people failing their diets, but diets failing people.
How to break the diet cycle
Breaking the cycle is less about finding a better diet and more about interrupting the loop at each stage. Here are the steps I use with clients.
Catch the starting thought. Next time you feel the urge to start a new diet, pause and write down the exact thought behind it. "I'm disgusting." "I have no self-control." "Everyone will notice." Seeing the words on paper helps you spot the cycle beginning, instead of being carried along by it.
Remove the deadline. A wedding, holiday or Christmas party is a date in the diary, not a finishing line for your body. Choosing to eat well because you want to feel good, rather than because a date is approaching, takes the panic out of it.
Drop the all-or-nothing rules. Flexible eating is far more stable than rigid restriction. If a biscuit is allowed, one biscuit stays one biscuit. If it's forbidden, it tends to become the packet.
Eat regularly. Long gaps and skipped meals set up the deprivation stage. Regular, satisfying meals keep your body out of the scarcity response that drives rebound eating.
Ask what the hunger is for. Before reaching for food outside a meal, ask: am I hungry, or am I tired, anxious, bored, lonely or overwhelmed? Then ask what that feeling needs. Sometimes it's food. Often it's rest, a conversation or ten minutes on your own.
Meet the slip with curiosity, not punishment. If you do overeat, skip the Monday restart. Ask instead: what happened before that? What was I feeling? That information is far more useful than a stricter plan.
Look at the bigger picture. Notice when your cycles speed up. Is it after visits to family? During busy seasons at work? Around anniversaries? These patterns point straight to the emotional roots.
What a healthy relationship with food looks like
The aim isn't a smaller body at any cost. It's a calmer, kinder relationship with food and with yourself, where your weight can settle naturally because you're no longer swinging between control and rebound. In practice, that looks like:
Eating without guilt. Food is food, not a moral score. A slice of birthday cake is a slice of birthday cake, not proof that you have failed.
Trusting your body's signals. You eat when you're hungry and stop when you're comfortably full, because your body is no longer bracing itself for the next restriction.
Comfort that isn't only food. You still enjoy food, but it's no longer your only way to soothe a hard day.
Speaking to yourself with respect. The voice in your head sounds less like a harsh critic and more like a good friend.
Caring for your body because you value it. Moving, resting and eating well become acts of looking after yourself, not punishments for how you look.
This is the opposite of what the diet industry sells. A diet asks you to fix your body so that you can finally like yourself. A healthy relationship with food works the other way round: when you begin to like and respect yourself, looking after your body becomes far easier, and far more natural. The changes that come from that place tend to last, because there's nothing to rebel against.
What do you feel about your body now?
Here's a question I like to ask clients, and I'd invite you to try it: what do you feel about your body right now? Not what you'd change, or how you'll feel once the weight has gone, but what you feel today, as it is.
Many women find that the honest answer is a list of complaints. And yet your body has carried you through every single day of your life. It breathes, heals, digests, feels, hugs the people you love, walks you into rooms and gets you through the hard weeks. It does all of that whether or not you've been "good" that week.
This matters for the diet cycle because it changes why you look after yourself. When you're at war with your body, food becomes either a reward or a punishment. When you appreciate your body, nourishing it starts to feel like the natural thing to do, the way you'd look after someone you love. Looking after yourself stops being something you have to force and becomes far more effortless.
There's research behind the link. A 2021 meta-analysis of 97 studies by Linardon and colleagues, published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders, found that intuitive eating, which means eating in response to your body's hunger and fullness signals, was associated with a more positive body image and with fewer signs of disordered eating. Most of the studies show a link rather than proving that one causes the other, but it fits what I see with my clients.
If you'd like to try it, here are a few small ways to start:
Make a thank-you list. Each evening, write down three things your body did for you today. A walk, a hug, a good night's sleep, getting through a difficult meeting.
Add what it does. When you catch a critical thought about how you look, add what that part of you does. "I don't like my thighs" can sit beside "and they carry me up the stairs".
Speak to it like a friend. Before you eat, or when you get dressed, say something kind or at least neutral. It may feel awkward at first, and that's fine.
Start with respect if love feels too far. You don't have to love how your body looks to treat it well. Respect and care are enough to begin with, and warmth often follows.
A gentle note: if eating ever feels completely out of your control, or involves making yourself sick, using laxatives or long periods of not eating at all, please speak to your GP or a specialist eating disorder service. In the UK, the charity Beat offers free, confidential support.
How RTT Hypnotherapy can help
RTT (Rapid Transformational Therapy), the method developed by Marisa Peer, is one of my favourite approaches because it works rapidly and has research behind it. It can help with the diet cycle in a few ways.
Gastric band hypnotherapy
Gastric band hypnotherapy uses hypnosis to help the mind accept that the stomach is smaller, so that you feel satisfied with less food and stop eating comfortably when you're full. For some clients it's a helpful tool, particularly for portion size and eating on autopilot. But I want to be honest with you about the evidence. A 2016 pilot study at the University of Hull, led by Stephanie Greetham, compared virtual gastric band hypnotherapy with relaxation hypnotherapy and found no significant difference between the two. To me, that backs up what I see in practice: the band works best when the reasons behind the eating have been looked at too.
Getting to the root of the cycle
This is where RTT really comes into its own. In a session, we use hypnosis to go back to the moments where your relationship with food and your body was first shaped, whether that was food as comfort, dieting as a way to feel acceptable, or the belief that you're not enough as you are. Once you understand where the pattern began, you can let go of the old meaning and put new, supportive beliefs in its place. Research supports the value of combining hypnosis with this deeper work: in a 1996 meta-analysis in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Irving Kirsch found that adding hypnosis to cognitive behavioural treatment more than doubled average weight loss, and the benefit grew over time rather than fading. Not every reanalysis has found effects that large, but the direction is encouraging, and it matches what I see when clients stop fighting food and start understanding it.
My client, the lawyer living in instalments, didn't need another plan. She needed to understand why she had been using food to quiet a constant pressure to perform, and why every diet felt like a test she was destined to fail. Once that changed, the cycle lost its hold. She eats well most of the time, enjoys a holiday without dread, and no longer plans her life around a Monday restart.
Changing what you reach for
Hypnotherapy isn't only about portion size or going back to old memories. It can also help shift how you think and feel about food day to day, so that nourishing choices feel natural and not like a rule you have to follow.
In sessions, we work with the associations that pull you towards food that numbs or rewards, and strengthen the ones that guide you towards food that leaves you feeling good: steadier energy, a clearer mind and a body that feels cared for. Nothing is banned, and nothing is labelled "good" or "bad". The aim is that the pull towards food that supports your energy, mind and health grows stronger while the old habit grows quieter, so nourishing yourself feels like something you want to do and not something you have to do.
A personalised recording then reinforces this between sessions. As with all of my work, results vary, and if you have a health condition this sits alongside medical or dietitian advice, not instead of it.
Ready to step out of the cycle?
If you recognise yourself in this, and you're tired of starting over every January, before every holiday or after every stressful season, I'd love to help. You can book a free first call with me here, and we can talk about what's driving your cycle and how RTT could help you leave it behind, so you can enjoy food again and feel at home in your body.
Maria x
You Might also Like These Blogs
Does Your Mood Change the Way You See Your Body?
I’m Maria — a Clinical RTT Hypnotherapist and Confidence Coach working online with professional women worldwide. I combine Rapid Transformational Therapy with trauma-informed coaching and nervous system regulation, going directly to the subconscious root of self-doubt, anxiety and the patterns that keep brilliant women stuck.
If something in this post resonated, a first call is a relaxed, no-obligation conversation about where you are and whether this work is the right fit.
