Low Calorie Diet - Why Does it Set you Up for a Nasty Fall?

By: John Davenport

Low calorie diets make a whole lot of sense. I mean, you drastically cut down what you eat and you lose weight, right?

Wrong!

Being on a low calorie diet is setting yourself up for a fall. And why? Because you're fighting biology and the way your metabolism works. Sure, you may see some impressive weight loss in the first few days or maybe weeks, but soon your weight loss will come to a grinding halt and you won't even know why. Then you're stuck eating so little that it's depressing and you're not even losing weight anymore.

Why do low calorie diets fail you in the long run?

The reason is very simple: When you start a low calorie diet, your metabolism is used to a higher amount of calories (what you used to eat before you went on a diet). When you start to cut down your calorie intake, your metabolism starts to gradually slow down and burn less and less calories. This is a biological process which is intended to keep our body alive for the longest time. You see, your metabolism thinks that you're running out of food because you're eating so little. It slows down so you can keep going for a long time on the calorie stores in your body. This is what kept our predecessors alive in the wild when they had little food.

This process causes your weight loss to slow down, because your metabolism slows down to the low level of calorie intake your new low calorie diet prescribes. Your metabolism burns less and less fat as time goes by and you stop losing weight. If you ever stop your low calorie diet, your metabolism is still running low and now you're taking in a lot of calories so you gain all the weight that you've lost and even more. That is the nasty fall I'm talking about.

What can you do about it? Avoid low calorie diets and use diets which let you eat a reasonable amount of calories each day and keep your metabolism running high at all times.

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