Probably the most controversial aspect of loosing weight is the nutritional component of the equation a.k.a. the diet. It may be one of the most feared words in America today. Diet! Just the mention of the word sends chills down your spine, your feet start turning cold and you begin to break out in a cold sweat. I know I hate the word Diet!
Why is that? Is it because we think we’re going to starve ourselves or worse spend half the day counting calories! Maybe it’ll be too painful because we believe we can’t have the foods we like. Maybe it’s because we’ve tried every diet known to man before and none of them have worked? Well, whatever reason you or I may have about diets I am here to tell you that we are absolutely right to fear them! What’s that you say? I said I agree with you diets don’t work and they will never work. Except maybe cause you to get fatter! I am going to share with you why this is true so you can understand that when the diet didn’t work before it wasn’t your fault.
First of all it’s a big mistake to go on a low calorie diet, yet that is what most of us do. Why? Because we figure since we overate to get in this mess in the first place the best way to get out of it is to under eat. Since most of us who want to lose weight want to take it off in a hurry, we conclude that the less we eat the faster the weight will come off. So we go on these unrealistic calorie restricted diets that cause us way more harm than good. Our zeal for wanting to get the weight off quickly really can take it’s toll on the body.
Our bodies start to become less efficient at burning body fat because it wants to hold on to it because it feels we are starving it. Remember body fat is our excess calorie storage that the body will use in time of starvation. The trouble is the body does not tap into that storage immediately. It will tap into your muscle storage first since muscle is not on the bodies top priority list for survival. This is bad news for us dieters because as we lose muscle our metabolism get slower and slower making the body less and less efficient at burning body fat. This turns into a viscious cycle that is hard to break out of.
So the next time you want to go on a ‘diet’ realize that what you are about to embark on is going to fail! Instead if you realize or become aware that you have to change your eating habits and these habits become a way of life, you will be able to take off the weight slowly and steady and more importantly, permanently.
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