Yet, with all of this knowledge we see that the majority of those who want to embark on a weight loss program are unsuccessful. We work hard every day and we watch our eating habits closely and the weight still doesn’t seem to want to let go of its hold on us. What could be the problem?
Part of the problem is that we have become victims of very smart advertising campaigns. They have convinced us that we can continue on the same path that we’ve been on for years but still we don’t see results. Mathew Meadley of Connected Congress a trusted Fitness and Health website explains,
The dieting industry is notorious for great marketing schemes. Their cut-calorie approach or restrictive calorie dieting has been a staple in our society for decades. You don’t even have to change what you eat, just the amount. How is it possible to eat the same foods that got you to where you are and truly believe that it will be a permanent fix?
Clearly, the traditional dieting approach has been ineffective and yet we keep trying to make it work again and again. Here are some reasons why it has failed to curtail the climbing rate of obesity across the nation.
Your Body Needs a Certain Amount of Calories for Sustenance
When you cut back too far on calories you will lose weight but it won’t be the way you expect it. Unfortunately the weight you will lose will be predominantly muscle tissue. You are proud of what the scale is telling you but you don’t realize that it’s not telling you the whole story. As you lose more and more muscle your body’s metabolism will slow down considerably.
The reason for this is because muscle and fat have two completely different functions in the body. The fatty tissue is there as a storage center for your body’s fuel while muscle is a tissue that needs calories to work. It is the center for burning the body’s fuel. So, for every ounce of muscle tissue you lose that’s one-ounce of fuel burning capability that the body has lost. You want to make sure that your body’s metabolic rate can continue to burn those excess calories in order to get the best effect. Pat Koch of Built Lean points out how to make sure that your muscles keep burning calories,
The best way to ensure your muscles are burning calories is to use them. The 10 pounds of muscle just sitting on your body may not burn that much, but the workouts you do in order to add that muscle means that you’re burning off calories. In terms of fat loss, strength training is the best way to add lean muscle and burn calories.
Sometimes, we have made our regular routine too much of a habit and our body does not recognize it as a weight loss regimen. We may actually be exercising too much or we have convinced our bodies that deprivation of nourishment will help us to lose the excess fatty tissue surrounding us. In fact, the opposite is true, our bodies need go into self-protection mode by storing excess fat. When the traditional methods for weight loss are not successful then sometimes we have to shock our bodies into action. Here are some off the wall tips that many people have tried to kick-start their bodies into action.
Remember that the scale cannot tell the difference between loss of muscle and loss of fat. You could be deceiving yourself into believing that the numbers mean you’re losing fat.
The Starvation Protection
Another reason why you may not be seeing the results you want is that your endocrine system is out of whack. When you restrict your caloric intake too much your endocrine system begins to go into a self defense mechanism. It naturally will kick in to prevent your body from starving by coaxing the thyroid gland to change your metabolism so that it can function on fewer calories. When you go back to your regular eating habits your body is now working on a different metabolism so you will now regain the weight you’ve lost plus gain a bit more. Notice how Dietitian Juliette Kellow,
The main way it does this is to protect its fat stores and instead use lean tissue or muscle to provide it with some of the calories it needs to keep functioning. This directly leads to a loss of muscle, which in turn lowers metabolic rate so that the body needs few calories to keep ticking over and weight loss slows down.
As a general rule of thumb the extreme caloric restrictions actually have the opposite effect that you are hoping for. What you really want to do is protect your muscles while dropping the body fat; this way you increase your metabolism and make your body a more efficient calorie-burning tool.
What Can You Do?
So, if you find that your traditional dieting plan is not yielding the effects that you are looking for follow some sage advice from nutrition and exercise experts. Make sure that you consume a minimum of 1,200 calories per day of healthy and nutritious foods. Rather than sitting down to the traditional three large meals every day, try to eat smaller meals every 3 hours instead and make sure that every meal has a healthy dose of protein. Since the composition of muscle tissue is predominantly protein, consuming enough of it can keep your body working efficiently and help you build more muscle mass in the process.
While everyone wants to lose that excess weight the methods they have tried have proven to be very ineffective. It’s time to break the mold and pull away from the hundreds of advertising gimmicks that promise you more of the same. Break away from tradition and try something new and different. This way you can shock your body into doing what you really want it to do.
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