Diets That Work
Finding diets that work can be a challenge especially if you are not suited for the type of diet chosen or you are trying to take a short cut to losing weight. There are several factors that can make a difference to find diets that work. Staying away from fad diets, the facts about diets that work, and knowing how the body responds to dieting will all help you understand the diets that work for you.
Staying Away from Fad Diets
Fad diets come and go generally because they do not work very well and tend to be shortcuts to a real solution. Diets that work do not rely on a weight loss pill or special shake. While these types of weight loss programs may work for a short while they are not long term healthy solutions. Ask yourself a series of questions when confronted with a potential new diet program:
- does this diet require me to take a pill or many pills several times a day?
- does the diet require me to drink a special shake every day?
- does this plan require me to purchase prepared or frozen meals?
- does this diet require me to eat in an unbalanced way (all carbs, no carbs, etc…)?
- does the diet promise me I will not have to exercise to lose weight?
- does this diet promise me double digit weight loss in a matter of weeks?
- does the diet seem too easy or too good to be true?
If the answer to any of these questions was yes then you should not consider the program for your weight loss needs or waste your money on a solution that will only frustrate you in the future.
The Facts about Diets That Work
Diets that work are based upon solid principles of healthy eating and appropriate amounts of exercise.
Diets that work will have some or all of the factors below in common:
- will be based on a healthy diet of fresh foods.
- will incorporate some type of exercise or weight training as part of the process.
- will not make unrealistic promises for immediate weight loss.
- will value the benefit of inches lost rather than weight lost.
- will promote lifestyle change and long term solutions to excess weight gain.
The facts regarding diets that work have been around a long time but with the large amount of misinformation and hype regarding some of the latest dieting trends it is sometimes hard to know what is real.
Knowing How the Body Responds to Dieting
The human body is built to store fat. It is due to this fact that we are able to survive severe crisis through the body’s natural survival mechanisms. Most people in today’s society have access to more food than the body needs so these storing mechanisms become a problem.
In order to find a diet that works it is important to understand how the body works to store fat and use these fat stores when it is no longer receiving the calories it needs to maintain the current balance. Muscle, fat, and calories are all factors in how the body works to store and use the energy we need to survive. Calories are in all the food we eat and the body uses these calories to carry on the body’s internal processes from day to day - which is why everyone has to eat.
Fat is the body’s way of storing the excess calories for survival, and muscle are dense metabolically active fibers that actually require calories to maintain size and density. This means that muscle burns calories for you every day even when you are just lying around. The more muscle you have the more calories you burn and the more calories you can consume to maintain this balance. Most diets will require a low caloric intake however; taking in fewer calories than needed will trigger the storing mechanism within the system and actually slow our metabolism down. This is the opposite of what diets that work want to happen! While the body may begin to burn the excess fat stores it can also begin breaking down the muscle which means the caloric intake needs to go down even more to compensate for the calories that the muscle used to burn.
Diets that work create a balance between healthy meals that will give the body the right amount of calories along with a muscle improvement exercise program that will create more calorie burning muscle content in the body. Several small meals a day will help to boost a sluggish metabolism and create fewer opportunities for the body to need to “store” the excess calories into fat.