Things have changed with how we go about losing excess fat weight loss these days. That’s if of course if you are savvy and know about the modern fat loss diet and are not still stuck in the old ways to lose weight that we have practiced and mostly failed at for the last thirty odd years.
When we look back at the methods we used to use to lose weight it is easy to see why they didn’t work for 95 percent of the time. How could we have put up with something with such a dismal failure rate for so long? For starters we would slash calories, usually 500-800 per day (sometimes even more) then we would add in some long duration, low intensity physical activity further increasing the calorie deficit.
We know understand that this all adds up to a very real threat to the human body. Any significant lowered food intake triggers an ancient ‘survival mode’ which quickly slows the metabolism (the rate we burn fuel), reduces activity levels and at the same time cranks up the appetite to try and get you to go find some food.
These sorts of weight loss diets made people pretty crazy as they were engaged in an ‘all- out’ war with one’s own mind and body. A war that can never be won as evolution built into us survival strategies to call into play when food is short. After all our body does not know we only want to fit into our skinny jeans and there is no real threat of starvation.
Let’s look at the main differences between a more modern fat loss diet and the old style weight loss diet:
Weight loss diet – Food restriction combined with low intensity exercise (little to no muscle toning exercise recommended) to create a large calorie deficit in an attempt to starve fat from the body. The whole point of this type of diet was to reduce calorie intake and force the body to give up its fat stores.
Fat loss diet – Is all about creating a healthy ‘fat burning’ metabolism so more calories are burnt each day than are taken in. To achieve this the focus is on ‘metabolic fitness’ and the balancing of the body’s fat storing/burning hormones so it becomes more efficient at burning fat. This was achieved by proper (strengthening) exercise supported by a healthy balanced eating plan (not just a diet).
Now let’s look at the difference between what these very different methods did to the metabolism (the body’s engine) along with its chemistry.
Weight loss diet – Creates fat storing hormones (cortisol) from the ‘diet’ stress of not enough food. This creates intense food cravings resulting in binges and overeating. Weak flabby muscles from the lack of muscle building and maintaining activity mean more insulin is needed to try and push sugar from the blood into muscle cells (that have no use for it anyway) to remove it from the blood where it does tissue damage. With less fuel being used for energy in the muscles means there is more to be stored as body fat.
Fat loss diet – Fuel created from the food we eat gets burned in muscle cells so a fat loss diet focuses on rebuilding and re-toning the muscles by directly working them with proper strength training exercise. Once up to full strength sugar can then be quickly used up from the blood stream rather than being stored as fat. With a healthy eating plan in place to support energy levels a more efficient fat burning metabolism is rebuilt from the ground up
Finally let’s look at the different eating plans needed for each type of diet:
Weight loss diet – Processed and refined foods acceptable if calories are low. Certain food groups and macro-nutrients (protein, carbohydrates and fats) removed thinking fat loss will happen quicker but really it just adds more stress (diet shock) making bad stuff happen to the bodies chemistry that work against a healthy metabolism.
Fat loss diet – You need to eat very differently on a fat loss diet
Small balanced meals (200-300 calories) each with a portion of protein are eaten every 2-3 hours throughout the day. The focus is on eating unprocessed foods as the body has to work much harder to process natural whole foods. These higher quality foods also supply important nutrients to support and enhance a healthy fat burning metabolism.
Summary: A weight loss diet is only concerned with what the bathroom scales say with little regard to how the weight loss is made up. Precious fat burning muscle tissue is usually sacrificed for a little bit of fat loss which leaves one very vulnerable to an ongoing overweight problem.
A fat loss diet is focused on achieving a healthy body composition (muscle/fat ratio) and this is the key to not only losing excess body fat but keeping it off long term. This is a diet plan you can live with and fix your overweight problem up for good. A weight loss diet is something that you cannot live with and that is why the failure rate is so very high.
Your focus should be on a proper fat loss diet lifestyle as it creates a strong, lean, firm, healthy, shapely body. An overweight feel-bad body is not a healthy one so when you get your head around the fact that health must be restored before body fat can be burned up you will be well on the way to fixing your overweight problem permanently.
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