If someone has become overweight the first thing we think of is that they should go on a diet. Everywhere we look we see examples of what we should be doing – television, magazines, book stores and the internet are full to overflowing with hundreds of different diet programs and plans. The trouble with this idea is that dieting rarely works and there are some major flaws in this type of mindset.
Most of these diet programs restrict food intake in the premise that you should eat less than you burn each day. But when you eat less in the hope of losing weight your body goes into ‘famine alert’. It is saying. “Wow, there must be a shortage of food, I had better conserve”. Your body then simply dials in a lower metabolic rate to make every scrap of food go further and to conserve energy.
Most people just think weight loss – but you do not want to lose weight, you want to lose body fat. If you drop weight quickly you will lose precious muscle tissue, water and other lean tissue which can make up to 25 percent of what you lose.
No wonder a diet cannot work
The whole protocol of most of these diet plans is wrong. This means they can never work in the first place. The things that are wrong include not performing strength training exercise, doing an excessive amount of low intensity long duration ‘cardio’ type activity and going too low on the calorie intake. These are the main reasons why these diet programs don’t work and a plateau occurs.
It is natural for your body to sit up and take notice if you reduce food intake too much. It is programmed to conserve fat – it is in our genetic blueprint. If you body thinks a famine is approaching it will do everything it can to protect those fat lsoingreserves including breaking down lean muscle tissue and ditching water.
So what we must do to lose excess body fat is pretty much the opposite of these out dated diet plans that never worked anyway. The new way and a far better way are to work on doing the things that boost the metabolism. This is your body’s engine and its health and condition determines if you are overweight or you are slim.
A diet cannot reboot your metabolism
It you have not being doing enough muscle building and maintaining activity for a while it is likely that you have become overweight because your body now has lowered energy requirements. Toned muscle is what drives the metabolism and that is the first place to start the rebuilding process.
A proper strength training exercise program will quickly and efficiently do the job with just 2-3 sessions each week. You will need to put some effort into your sessions to challenge your body so it becomes stronger and burns more fuel around the clock both when you are active and when you are resting.
For successful weight loss, forget that word diet and start doing the things that will have you burning more fuel (calories) each day rather than trying to take in less than what you burn. Proper exercise supported with a healthy eating plan will rebuild health, rebalance fat burning hormones, reduce food cravings and give you more energy so you can be more active.
All these things will chew into those fat stores and over time will allow you to reclaim that slim trim body that is just waiting for the right signals from you to show itself.
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