Why low calorie diets fail

Why low calorie diets fail;

The main reason why most low calorie diet plans don't work is that starving your body of calories, leaves it mal nourished and lacking in energy. This leaves you feeling sickly and tired, with no energy to complete the exercise you need, or even enough to just complete your regular daily activities. These things happen because of the bodies starvation response causing your metabolic rate to drop.

To lose weight successfully you should remember a few things...

Firstly calories are not your enemy, although a slight calorie deficit is required to achieve fat loss, you body needs a certain amount of calories each day to function correctly (BMR / A quick estimate of your BMR is your weight multiplied by 10 - 11). When your body feels that it is getting enough food, your metabolic rate will stay high, which is what you need to lose weight!

What you need to do avoid the empty calories in the junk foods and aim to eat more of what is known as negative calorie food. A negative calorie food isn't a food that actually has negative calories. A negative calorie food is a food that forces your body to burn up more calories than it supplies when it is digested (Yes digesting food actually burns up a certain amount of calories!). Negative calories foods include cucumber, cress, asparagus, broccoli, cabbage, celery, lettuce, peppers and tomatoes, to name but a few. Eating these negative calorie foods will help you will you weight loss goals.

The thing you should aim for to lose fat successfully is build muscle – thus, EXERCISE!. Muscle actually burns up calories just by maintaining themselves. This is the great effect that having more lean muscle will give you, the more muscle you have the more calories they will burn up, and therefore the faster you will be able to lose weight!

To build lean muscle you need to supply your body with enough protein. Protein is the body's building blocks and without it you will be unable to grow new muscle. Foods including poultry, fish and lean meat are the best sources of protein, so ensure that you are getting enough protein in your diet. As a rough guide you need about one gram of protein per pound of lean body weight. The other great advantage of eating protein rich foods is that they help to keep hunger at bay, so the possibility of over eating is much lower.

To effectively build muscle you should combine this protein rich diet with a suitable resistance training routine. Training with weights two or three times a week will encourage new muscle growth to occur.

If you are following a very low calorie, you will not be able build muscle, in fact if your calorie in take is too low you may in fact lose muscle. This is because your body thinks that it is being starved of calories and may begin to break down muscle as an internal energy source.

A lot of these low calorie diets trick you into thinking you are losing fat quickly at first, this weight loss is actually only from muscle and water, with no weight being lost from fat at all! If you apply the two points in this article you will begin to see some better results in your fat loss goals.