Friday, December 11, 2009

Reducing Calories Does Not Promote Weight Loss

By Carrie Spry

Are the enemy Calories? The answer is No. Eating fewer calories will not result in weight loss. For example, if you are currently eating 2500 calories per day and drop to 1500 calories, you necessarily lose weight. If you cut your calories so drastically, you will reach a dieting plateau (you will reach a point where you will no longer lose weight.)

How does a person typically begin a diet? Well, one day you look in the mirror and are disappointed with what you see. Your clothes are getting tighter and tighter. It's just so frustrating. You put in a bit of an effort each day to no avail. There are people out there who eat the same, yet they don't gain the weight. Do these affirmations sound familiar? On this day you are particularly frustrated and get angry enough that you decide to go on a diet.

Today you have enough anger, motivation and frustration that you decide that you are going to do whatever it takes to lose it this time. You start by skipping breakfast; after all, you'll be having lunch in a few hours. Getting closer to lunch, you feel like you might not make it. You begin feeling week, the motivation has worn off, and everything around you is reminding you of food. Your body is not accustomed to being without food for so long.

You feel miserable, but you bravely tell yourself that you can do this. You don't want to quit, and you want to actually lose weight this time. You still have enough motivation that at lunch you decide to have something small as you are still convinced that eating less is the key to losing weight.

By dinner, your hungry, tired and chances are you have a headache. You begin thinking, "Do you really want to do this everyday? Do you want to fight against yourself?" You are still so determined that you decide to stick with it for the rest of the day.

If you're brave then you may have held off for a week or two, chances are, you've gone back to your ways after only a few days. Usually diets link this end in some kind of binge which officially declares the end. Even if you were able to stick to it for a few weeks, you won't have lost any significant weight. You may have even made it worse. Since your body thinks it was starving, it begins to absorb every calorie that enters it.

You may have lost a few pounds during this type of diet, but the weight that was lost is just water weight, not real fat loss. And all that water weight will be gained right back when you eat normal again.

This is why if you keep trying to starve yourself, you will never lose weight. Starving yourself is not the answer. If you are serious about weight loss, you need to start giving your body the right types of calories in the right doses on the right days. - 29161

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