Low Calorie Diets are Not the Way to Go
Sunday, June 21st, 2009Before you start your low calorie diets, I would recommend you to stop and read this article. I hate seeing folks start a low calorie diet plan to lose weight fast, just to come to a conclusion that it does not work.
I have heard from many individuals who have tried at one time or another, a popular low calorie diet plan for weeks, give 100% effort only to lose a couple of pounds. Can you imagine how upset, frustrated or defeated they became?
The number one reason why low-calorie diet plans don’t work is: when you eat low-calorie foods, your body basically remains malnourished. You feel sick and tired at all times. Forget about exercises, you don’t have enough energy to complete even your regular activities.
The reason for this is their metabolic rate was too low. If you wish to lose weight successfully, you must keep a couple of things in mind.
1. Calories are not our enemies. Believe it or not calories are our friends, they supply the necessary nutrition and energy our body needs. This helps maintain our metabolic rate, which allows us to burn unwanted fat.
The bad calories are those available in junk foods. So while you won’t accumulate fat by eating 10 apples per day (even though a single apple contains almost 100 calories), you will surely get fat by eating 10 burgers!
You have to stay away from empty calories foods (i.e. junk food) and stick to negative calories, like fruits and vegetables.
Now negative calorie doesn’t mean that there is no calorie in these foods; it only means that in order to digest themselves, these foods will force your body to burn more calories than what they provide. This results in calorie deficit which will ultimately result in weight loss.
2. Muscle building is a must. Do you know that in order to maintain themselves, muscles burn a lot of your calories? This means the more lean muscles you have, the faster you will be able to lose weight.
Eating protein-rich foods is a good way to build lean muscles, working out regularly in the gym is another. There’s another yet advantage of eating protein-rich foods: you won’t feel hungry too often and the possibility of overeating is slim to none.
By following a low-calorie food diet, you do not have enough energy to build muscle. Instead you lose muscle and your body can not burn fat since your metabolism remains lower than normal. This is one of the reasons why low-calorie diets are not effective.
Most low-calorie diets will only assist you to lose water and muscles. Unfortunately, you may think you have lost a lot of pounds, however you have not lost the most important of all: fat. If you can’t lose fat, you can’t get fit!