By: Total Trainer Team
Dieting for prolonged weight loss doesn't work and trying to lose weight via dieting can actually make you fatter. Really? Surely not. How can this be true. Weight loss is all about dieting and cutting out bad foods, junk foods and fatty foods that add weight. Aren't they?
How weight loss diets normally work
Traditionally to lose weight people drop the number of calories they eat during meal times and snack times. This makes perfect sense. If eating too many calories makes you fat, then too few calories will make you thin. This, is true. However, and this is a BIG however, many people view diets as a short term method to weight loss.
What the diet industry banks on
The diet industry is based solely on the idea that diets don't work. Companies, including Weight Watchers, Slim Fast and others encourage dieters to follow a weight loss programme for a number of weeks - or however long it takes the dieter to reach their target weight, only to see sucessful slimmers return at a later date because they have gained weight again.
What typically happens is that after someone has lost weight they feel they can begin to eat whatever they want again. This will include treats and sweets and things that were not included in their weight loss programme. And so the process of regaining excess weight again begins.
Why can diets make you fat?
During the course of any weight loss programme, the body consumes fewer calories that it wants to. Sounds simple. However, this can trick the body into believing that it is 'starving', that food isn't plentiful and so when extra calories are reintroduced, it quickly stores these calories as excess body fat, just in case food and calories are reduced again in the near future. The result is that as soon as a diet is finished and a target weight has been reached, a dieter finds that their weight begins to goe back up quicker than it was lost. And so yo-yo dieting begins - losing weight only to regain weight followed by another diet to lose weight only to again regain any weight lost etc.
What is the best way to lose weight?
The single best way to lose weight and not regain lost weight after a diet is to not diet at all. Rather than thinking you're on a short term quick-fix diet, try to make better choices at all meal times; rethink what you eat and aim to make these changes a lifestyle choice rather than choices to simple lose weight. This will reduce the amount of calories you eat during each meal but will do so over the long term, which will allow you to maintain your target weight.
Also, aim to incorporate resistance training or weight bearing exercises into your lifestyle changes, not to burn calories during an exercise session per se (although this will happen), but rather to increase your metabolic rate, which is the rate at which your body burns calories during rest. Muscle is the bodies fat burning engine and so the more lean muscle tissue you have, the more calories you will burn and the better chance you have of staying slim.