Many people try to lose weight and fail. Ninety five percent of all diets fail. We may wonder why this is so and what we can do to be successful at weight loss. The problem is most diets do not address the reason why you are overweight. If you have tried and failed to lose weight in the past it is because your metabolism (your body’s engine) is not healthy and strong. When it is in this condition it is burning less fuel (calories) than it should be and is storing more fat.
When you go on a diet (almost any diet) they have you cut back – way back on calories which gives your body a big shock. The name for this is ‘diet shock’ and is very common during many popular weight loss diets. Your body cannot recognize the difference between dieting and a severe food shortage, so it responds as it you are really starving. It does not know there is a fridge full of food in the next room and you only want to fit into your skinny jeans again.
When we trigger this ancient survival response it shocks an already unhealthy metabolism and stresses it further. This is the reason you will not get good results on ANY diet or exercise program or they come very slowly or don’t last for long. When this response kicks into gear protective mechanisms are activated to decrease body fat loss. These responses include reduced energy levels, lowered physical activity and increased food cravings and appetite. Your body is trying to get you to go find food.
So, we take an already unhealthy metabolism, reduce food intake drastically and force the metabolism to slow even further. This means fewer calories are needed to keep the body’s processes running, but if you are not able to burn up enough calories you will not be able to lose weight.
Reduced energy will not help you lose weight
To top it all off, this condition causes a reduction in energy output. This is because of the reduced availability of glucose, which is the body’s primary energy source and so the metabolism is slowed to adjust for this. Because you have little energy, performing a proper strengthening exercise program which would increase your metabolism and cause you to burn off additional calories so you can lose weight is not possible.
Most people will reduce calories even further at this stage trying to initiate more weight loss but this only makes the problem worse because the body will continue to cut back to the perceived threat of starvation. Using these methods to lose weight is futile.
The modern way to lose weight involves strategies that increase metabolism (proper exercise and healthy unprocessed food) to get you burning more calories than you take in each day. This is the opposite of trying to eat less than you burn each day. If done correctly you can stay under the body’s radar system and not trigger the starvation response.
Proper exercise is a must to lose weight
A huge part of this method is 2-3 sessions each week of proper strength training exercise to re-tone and rebuild weak flabby muscles that have very low energy requirements. Our modern sedentary world no longer has enough muscle building and maintaining activity in it so an intentional exercise program is needed to replace it. If we don’t get this proper exercise we not only become overweight, we become unhealthy and our disease risk is increased.
The old types of long slow, low intensity exercise activities will not increase the driver of the metabolism – your toned muscle tissue so they are put aside in favor of strengthening exercise but with some effort put into each session to reboot the metabolism so you can lose weight.
Support your exercise program with a healthy eating plan that includes 4-6 small meals each day, each with a portion of quality protein and the balance vegetables and you have a much healthier and effective plan to help you lose weight for the long haul.
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