Depending on what you eat and how much you exercise, weight control diets can be both good and bad. Most weight control diets require that you restrict your calorie intake to about a thousand or less calories per day.
Restricting your calories to such an extent makes your body feel like it’s in a famine, and so it goes into starvation mode. As a result, your body starts preparing for the next “famine” by holding on to every calorie it can.
Thus, when you go back to eating regular food or when you cheat on your diet you start gaining a lot of weight.
This is why most weight control diets aren’t effective. You end up gaining all the weight that was lost, and often you gain more weight than you lose.
It’s a good idea to create a deficit of a few calories instead of cutting back on a thousand or less calories per day, especially since your body doesn’t like to starve.
First you need to calculate the number of calories that your body needs everyday to maintain its current weight. Your daily caloric requirement can be calculated using any of the following two formulae: The Harris-Benedict Formula and The Katch-McArdle Formula.
(If you want a little more info, just do a simple Google search.)
Once you know your daily caloric requirement, in order to find your calorie intake for weight loss, simply reduce 15% to 20% from it.
Reducing your calorie intake by such a small amount will not make you prone to putting back on any weight that you lose, because it won’t trigger a starvation response.
Weight control diets such as the “cabbage soup diets” and “celery and cream cheese diets” are examples of diets that are designed for crash dieting.
These often require that you eat only one or two kinds of foods.
Excluding all other types of foods, you can eat as much of the prescribed foods as you want.
You really don’t need a doctorate in biology to figure out how wrong this is.
While you do lose some weight in the beginning, such weight control diets deny your body the necessary nutrition.
To make matters worse, you tend to easily gain the weight back on, and then some, because such diets trigger the starvation response.
The best weight control diets will require you to follow a healthy diet and exercise regularly.
Good weight control diets result from this perfect mix.
Your body starts to burn calories more effectively and quickly when you exercise, because exercise increases your metabolic rate.
Moreover, the protein required to build lean muscle is also provided by such diets.
You start to burn calories faster than you would otherwise as the increase in muscle mass raises your metabolic rate.
Since the minimal calorie reduction does not reduce the increased metabolic rate, you are able to burn calories such that you can lose weight in a healthy manner.
The market is filled with hundreds of books on weight control diets that make you eat unusual combinations of foods or impose strict limits on the amount of calories you consume.
You cannot expect these diets to work.
Follow the link below for more information on weight control diets that can help you burn fat in a healthy manner….
The myths and truths behind weight control diets.
Filed under Fat Burning by on Oct 17th, 2009. Comment. 
Your Fat Burning Success Starts Here!
How many times have you seen an advertisement for “The Best Fat Loss Program”?
The weight loss market is abounding in theories, opinions, and advice on how to shed pounds and burn body fat.
But if you’re looking for the best fat loss program available, you need to go slow and check out the claims. It’s important to choose a program that addresses more than just nutrition and diet. An ideal weight loss program will also include cardiovascular exercise and resistance training.
You may lose weight by dieting alone, but not as much weight as you would lose by adding physical activity to your plan. A diet plan alone will cause loss of muscle mass and will most likely fail to reshape the body. Your body will appear soft and smooth instead of looking lean, athletic, and toned.
When you are looking for the best fat loss program, you should look for a plan which also focuses on exercise in some form.
The Right Way to Create a Calorie Deficit
In order to lose weight and burn fat, the number of calories consumed must be less than the number of calories expended. So, you need a “caloric deficit.”.
This deficit can be created either through diet, exercise, or a combination of both. Given the above, it would make most sense to just miss a meal and not bother with having to exercise in order to create a calorie deficit.
But, in truth, skipping meals will only backfire, leaving your fat burning program ineffective. This is because when the body does not get enough calories and nutrients, as a result of skipping meals, its “famine response” is activated. When your body faces a large decrease in caloric intake, it will actually begin to store fat and slow down its metabolism in an effort to stave off starvation.
To create the ideal caloric deficit, the best fat loss program will rely less on a dietary approach and more on an exercise routine.
Benefits of Adding Cardio to Your Program
Your efforts to burn fat and lose weight by adopting a fat burning program that focuses on diet alone will bring results; however, the process will be much slower. By adding a cardiovascular exercise routine to the fat burning program, the body will be able to burn more calories and still have the nutrients it needs to maintain muscle mass.
You can speed up your metabolism by burning calories through cardio and resistance training. An elevated metabolic rate enables the body to more burn fat and calories, without triggering a famine response.
Good nutrition that provides the body with essential nourishment and an exercise program including cardiovascular workouts and resistance training that raises the metabolism are necessary components of the best fat loss program.
To achieve a toned and sculpted physique, you must adopt a training program that maximizes your fat burning potential. Cardiovascular exercise, though important for burning fat, is not enough to reshape the body.
In your search for the best fat loss program, look for one that includes all three key aspects: nutrition, cardio, and resistance training. Satisfactory fat loss cannot be achieved through cardio alone. You may know many people who spend hours engaged in cardiovascular exercise and never lose weight or burn fat, and this is the reason why.
For strong, healthy muscles, resistance training is necessary. Muscle tissue actually burns calories even while you are at rest, because it is metabolically active; also, it gives you the toned, athletic look that you are hoping for.
One program we have found that meets all of our goals to start burning fat quickly and help in keeping it off is The Truth About Burning Fat by Sean Nalewanyj.
Filed under by on Oct 11th, 2009.
