Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Reducing Calories Does Not Promote Weight Loss

By Carrie Spry

Reducing calories will not help you lose weight. Calories are not the enemy here. If you eat 2500 calories per day and reduce yourself to 1500 calories per day, you won't necessarily lose weight. Your body will simply burn fewer calories. You will reach a dieting plateau. This means that you may lose a few pounds; however, once you reach a certain point, it will be impossible to lose weight.

Let's begin with, how a person typically goes on a diet. One day you look into the mirror and see tight fitting close and you just don't look right. Your neck, arms, legs, and waist are larger than you remember. You put on a pair of jeans and they just don't pull on the way the use to, easily. They fit tight and are uncomfortable sitting down. Sound familiar? Anyways, on this day, you get angry and frustrated enough to finally put your self on a diet and decide to lose weight. And this time, you are going to stick to it.

Today is the day of new beginnings. You start by skipping breakfast and decide that you will have an early lunch, or brunch as they call it. Kill two birds with one stone. When it gets close to your next meal, all you can think about is food. You begin to get a little shaky as your body is not used to going this long without food.

You feel miserable, but you bravely tell yourself that you can do this. You don't want to quit, and you want to actually lose weight this time. You still have enough motivation that at lunch you decide to have something small as you are still convinced that eating less is the key to losing weight.

By dinner, your hungry, tired and chances are you have a headache. You begin thinking, "Do you really want to do this everyday? Do you want to fight against yourself?" You are still so determined that you decide to stick with it for the rest of the day.

After a few days, you've likely gone back to your previous ways. Or, perhaps, if you are really brave you may have held off for a week or too. But now you feel terrible. Even if you've stuck with it for a few weeks, you won't have achieved any serious weight loss, and in fact, your body will still look the same when you look in the mirror. You may have made even worse by starving your body and now it absorbs every single calorie that enters your body. This is bad news, especially when you go back to your normal habits.

You may have lost a pound or two, but this weight that was lost was only water weight and will be gained back as soon as you begin to eat normally again.

Now you know why you've always failed when trying to starve yourself in the past, since it's just not possible to lose weight by starving yourself. Serious weight loss cannot be achieved by starvation diet. Serious weight loss can only be achieved by giving your body the right types of calories at the correct times each day.

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