Why Restricting Calories Never Works for Weight Loss
Introduction
After the
dust and cookie crumbs from the Holiday festivities settled, many adults
made a resolution not only to take off the Christmas pounds but to get
into better shape over all. By now, you might or might not still be
carrying on with your good intentions.
Either way, here's some
encouragement for you.
You're not
alone if you're on a diet or thinking about starting one. On any given
day, there are about 60 million U.S. Americans on a weight reduction diet.
Out of a population of about 300 million, that means one in five of the
people you might encounter today are right now in the process of
attempting to take off extra pounds, whether they need to or not.
During
the course of this year, if data from the previous several years are
predictive, half of the entire population will start a diet in the hopes
of losing some weight, meaning that every alternate person you meet today
will try to lose weight this year. Among women, 3 out of 4 feel they need
to work and shed some weight.
It is no
wonder, with a market that lucrative and widespread, that the dieting
industry is so competitive and saturated. And it is no wonder the products
- from books, to pills, to exercise machines - are often focused more on
what will sell than what will work. Buyer beware.
An understanding of just
a few key principles would help many people choose wisely among the
hundreds of different plans available. Rather than starting a diet plan that is
inherently flawed and doomed to fail, one particular fact could prevent
you from suffering that fate of 98% of all dieters.
Research has proven
beyond question that 'traditional' diets that are based on a restriction
of calories simply do not work. At all. They actually backfire and cause
weight gain!
In a
nutshell, here's why simply reducing calories will not ever work. Our
bodies are programmed in miraculous ways for survival, and the part of our
brain that does the work to keep us alive couldn't care less about fitting
into a smaller sized pair of jeans.
Faced with a radical reduction of
food, the alarms go off and our bodies set to work: conserving energy,
creating more fat, slowing down metabolism, and engaging in a battery of
survival mechanisms that keep us from starving. In the process of
restricting calories, people inadvertently trigger these "starvation
responses," which make weight loss very difficult and which guarantee
that when the diet is over, all the lost weight will be regained.
We fall for
diet programs that defy common sense because there is so much conflicting
information, so much powerful marketing competing for our dollars, and so
much, well, desperation.
We want something quick, easy, effective -
benefits that are promised to us by many diet products and plans. However,
low-calorie is over. Low-fat is history. High protein is on the wane. And
low-carb is on its way out.
What does
really work then? It's deceptively simple. Eat the foods our bodies have
evolved to eat, in proper proportions and in proper combinations and it
will work. Those
combinations are not common knowledge in today's culture of convenience
food, but they are known and proven through many sound research studies.
A
recommended resource is a short and direct book by Dr. Phillip Lipetz
called "The Good Calorie Diet." Written in 1994, the principles
it details of which foods we should eat in what combination are as old as
humankind. The studies on which the book is based are sound and do work.
The concepts
in the book are easy to understand. The basics boil down to a few
principles. The main two I'll give here so you can get started on the road
to changing your eating habits for permanent and real weight loss.
Eat
whole food, not processed (that is, avoid foods that come in a package,
can, or box). Avoid combining animal protein with starchy carbohydrates
(bread, potatoes, pasta, rice) or fruit. This is aligned with the way our
ancestors ate, and it makes sense to eat according to the diet humans have
thrived upon for millennia.
Author: Grace M.
Navarro
For more
information on Diet Weight Work Visit: -
Visit
http://www.ezediets.com/
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