Low Calorie Diet

It is best if the calorie level in your diet allows for a weight loss of one pound per week or less. Due to the water loss in the beginning, results are more noticeable in the first couple of weeks.

Just keep in mind that the preferred calorie level for every individual shall vary based on your weight and age. Therefore you may have to consume a bit more or a bit less, depending on your lifestyle and situation.

Supplements are meant to give you energy and vitality all through the day and should form part of you healthy diet and exercise plan. It is good to take these supplements when on a low calorie diet. 

Choosing the Right Weight Loss Diet

You may not believe this but dieting can cause you to become fatter. When you lessen your food intake so that you can lose weight, your body senses a ‘famine alert’. It thinks that food is in short supply and hence reduces your metabolism so that it can make the best of whatever little food it is getting.

By “losing weight” we actually mean “losing fat”. If weight is lost too fast, nearly 25% of this weight loss will come from muscle, lean tissue and water.

The reason to this is that our body is designed to latch on to fat. Hence it focuses on losing water and breaking down muscle so that it can latch on to the fat content. 

If this is how you want to lose weight you are unlikely to succeed. Once you have lost your weight fast through some weight loss diet and you then return to your normal diet, your body will immediately start to store a greater amount of intake as fat. It does so because your body really wants to make sure that it has enough fat reserves when another ‘famine’ happens.

Dieting often implies reducing the intake of a particular type of food or reducing the total intake. Due to this the body does not receive some important nutrients it must have. This is the reason why we must take dietary supplements. The right supplements can actually make you lose weight faster and more easily. They keep you healthy and help you in losing weight naturally and quickly.

Muscle, Fat, and Water

Do you know that you lose not just fat but also muscle tissue when you lose weight by going on a weight loss diet? There have been umpteen studies in the field of weight loss and one of the proven facts is that you lose 75% fat and 25% muscle tissue in this process. Moreover, you lose IMMENSE amount of water too during this process of weight loss.

Water makes up more than 75% of our body weight. Even fats and muscle tissues contain large amounts of water.

All through the day, your body burns calories to generate energy for doing activities. When you walk up and down the stairs, when you lift things, when you sit down and type, and for just about any little activity that requires movement, you are burning calories.

When the intake and expenditure of calories is in balance, your weight remains constant and everything remains fine. But when you start consuming more calories than what you can expend, you start piling up weight.

Your body piles up fat wherever it finds it easy to, like your buttocks, waist, thighs, chest, neck, etc. As soon as you find yourself gaining fat, start working on it. If you continue to ignore the buildup of fat, soon you’ll get to a point where it becomes very difficult to lose it all.

A correct balance of diet and exercise is what you need to lose fat. The right combination of healthy diet and exercise is what really makes a big difference. A high fiber diet is the first thing you should adopt. Also drink 8-10 glasses of water every day. Water helps your system remain clean of toxins.

So this was a primer on weight loss. Now let’s find out the various different types of diets in the next posts.

Setting a Weight Loss Goal

Overweight and obese people have often fallen back on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans that recommend eating low fat foods, grains, green vegetables and fruits. Some people also try and resort to dieting, but they need to be guided effectively on how to lose and maintain weight.

Unless you are really obese or extremely overweight, and need to shed fat right away, your strategy should always focus on the long term. By setting long term goals and dedicatedly following the basic rules of weight loss, you will see permanent results, which is what you want.

These are the typical steps that someone would take on a weight loss diet and exercise plan:

1.   Visit your doctor and check whether it is fine for you to reduce your calorie intake and increase exercise.

2.   Start a balanced diet plan that creates a calorie deficit and leads to losing 4 to 5 pounds a week. You should have around 5 servings of fruits and vegetables every day, and also include whole grain food, dairy products, and lean meat. This is a very good diet to follow and is sure to cause weight loss. Later in this blog post series I will present several diet plans to you. 

3.   Exercise or some kind of vigorous physical activity is a must if you wish to shed weight. You need not have to go to the gym and pump iron. You can start off by simple activities like taking the stairs instead of elevators and escalators, parking your car some distance behind your destination and walking the distance, and so on.

Weight Loss - Genetics

Genetics is indeed a major factor in determining your metabolic rate and consequently your weight. If your parents have a slow metabolism, i.e. their bodies digest food very slowly, chances are that you have inherited your slow metabolism from them.

NOTE: You shouldn’t use this fact as an excuse though; with focused and persistent efforts at healthy diet and exercise, it is easily possible to change this.

Weight loss - Eating Too Quickly

I was in the military and we had to eat our meals very quickly so that we could resume training. It wasn’t a problem for us because we exercised and trained every single day so we couldn’t notice any bad effects as we were not trying to lose weight but gain muscle.

After leaving the military I continued my habit of eating quickly. With hardly any exercise, it wasn’t too long before I gained 50 pounds. I was at a loss. It wasn’t even a year since I’d left the military.

I later found out that if you eat very quickly your brain cannot figure out when to stop until it is too late. You need to allow time for the brain to respond to the signal from your stomach that I’m full! Eating slowly also helps you digest food better and should be part of any weight loss plan.