Sunday, September 20, 2009

Reducing Calories Does Not Promote Weight Loss

By Carrie Spry

Calories are not the enemy. Most people believe that eating fewer calories will result in weight loss. This is not exactly true. If you are eating 2500 calories per day and drop down to 1500 calories per, you won't necessarily lose weight. If you cut your calories by too much, then you will reach a dieting plateau; a point where you will no longer loose 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 you are filled with enough motivation, anger, and frustration that you are determined to do whatever it is going to take to lose that unsightly weight. You begin depriving yourself of all those goodies you love. You try and skip breakfast in order to "cut back" on calories. Unfortunately, this motivation doesn't last long because after a few hours you're hungrier than you've ever been before and you're feeling week and possibly have a headache. Your body is not accustomed to skipping meals like this and not used to being without calories for so long.

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.

This is why if you keep trying to starve yourself, you will never lose weight. Starving yourself is not the answer. If you are serious about weight loss, you need to start giving your body the right types of calories in the right doses on the right days.

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