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Have you ever seen a picture of a stick thin celebrity, talking about her diet program? “I start the day with an apple and for lunch I have a salad with low-fat dressing” and so it goes.
Well, take that with a pinch of salt. Some of these celebs are actually undernourished, so of course they look thin. And you can bet that if they are healthy they do eat other stuff, and they have a personal coach as well. The fact is, you won’t get slim and healthy on a low calorie diet alone.
It does seem logical that if you eat less and exercise more, your body will burn the excess fat and then you’ll be slimmer …. surely it will work??
Well, yes, sort of … but, there are some extra considerations that complicate things just a wee bit though … if you start to eat less without thinking about WHAT you eat, you will end up being malnourished and skinny!
Here are two basic reasons why low calorie diets don’t work:
Firstly, the fact is that all calories are different. Processed food, with additives and treatments to make it last longer simply does not have the “good” calories found in – for example – apples and vegetables. You should not avoid calories per se, you should avoid “bad” calories. Calories that are in natural, unprocessed food are much better for you than calories in “junk food” and processed foodstuff.
You want to get slimmer and healthier, lose stomach fat, get rid of love handles – everything. Even if you cut down on calories drastically you would not achieve that.
A dramatic example would be to ONLY drink “Zero Coke” – there’s absolutely no calories in that drink. Would you lose weight? Certainly. Will you be healthy? Absolutely not! You’ll be malnourished and feeling pretty bad quite soon …..
Your body NEEDS calories to survive. If you eat foods rich in “good” calories your body will burn more energy digesting these than what the calories give to you.
A large apple contains about 100 calories and so do three strips of bacon. Now imagine eating 10 apples a day or 30 strips of bacon … will you get fat from the apples or from the bacon?
The second reason has to do with the fact that muscle burns more calories than fat. In fact, fat is sort of “dead tissue”, that is, it doesn’t do anything for your metabolism while muscle tissue actually consumes energy just to maintain itself. That is the reason why people with a high ratio of lean muscle to fat can eat more, and still stay slim – whilst fat people stay fat even though they might just pick at their food.
Now there are obviously other things to consider when you want to lose love handles and stomach fat, or simply lose weight. For example, fat obeys the same rule as the unions – last in first out. The fat you first put on – which usually is on your thighs and around your middle – is the last to disappear!
In other words, to get rid of love handles it is necessary to build some muscle and be patient. You didn’t put on weight from one day to another, nor did the love handles appear overnight. It will take time to get rid of the excess, but it’ll melt off you far quicker than you put it on.
If you go on a low calorie diet you will not build muscle, instead your body loses muscle. Since you don’t have enough lean muscle tissue your metabolism is low, and so your body can’t burn the fat.
Most of the low calorie diets around will “work” in a fashion – in the short term you will lose water and muscle so you are fooled into thinking you’re getting slimmer. But long term they don’t work!
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