You can't blame them. After all, after years of abuse, their bodies may have become loaded with toxins, which contribute to not only ill health, but also overweight. The United States is a nation with obesity problem. In a futile attempt to address the obesity problem, many individuals go on fad diets - some even starve themselves - to lose weight. Starving oneself is perhaps too drastic an attempt to lose weight.
Maybe the less extreme measure to lose weight is to choose one of the meal-plan diet systems, all touted to give you convenience and guaranteed weight loss within weeks. As a matter of fact, one of my friends joined one of those programs, catered for those who wish to lose weight without too much fuss, and touted to make participants lose weight - at least 20 to 30 pounds within weeks. According to my friend, the food was healthy and appetizing. However, the portions were miserably small, so small that she had to eat two - and sometimes even three - portions for one meal in order to satisfy her hunger. Maybe you don't want to know the rest of the story. Eventually, she gave up on the program and ended up with more weight gain than before.
Isn't that typical of a low-calorie diet? You eat less, and you feel hungry, so you eat more, and end up gaining more.
The moral lesson here is: Starving yourself does not help you lose weight. Eating a little "less" may help with your weight loss, but eating "not enough" may have the opposite result, which is ultimate weight gain.
Is fasting any different from a low-calorie diet?
First of all, fasting and starvation are not the same. Fasting is a natural way of abstaining from food and drink, except water, for an extended period. Fasting can last between a day to several weeks, depending on the constitution of an individual. Fasting is internal cleansing at its best. It involves dislodging your body toxins and waste products from your cells and joints, and transporting them from your body for ultimate removal. Fasting makes you younger and healthier for longer by giving you clear and clean skin. Fasting makes you healthier for longer through disease prevention. Above all, it enhances your body metabolism rate, thereby instrumental in controlling and managing your weight. However, it must be pointed out that fasting does not contribute to weight loss (just as starvation cannot make you lose weight), because the extra pounds you lose during a fast or starvation, for that matter, may well be gained back once you resume eating. The initial weight loss in any diet or program is due to the loss of water, not fat.
Having said that, fasting is still ideal in controlling and managing weight because it is different from starvation in that fasting changes the chemistry in your body and improves your metabolism rate, while starvation damages it. Your metabolism rate plays a pivotal role in long-term weight control. This is the essential difference between fasting and starvation.
People who go on a regular fast usually eat naturally and normally. They get all the nutrients from their everyday diet. Occasionally, they fast just to get their bodies cleansed and detoxified.
A low-calorie diet, on the other hand, is more or less starvation. You need some 2,000 calories a day to keep you young and healthy. Anything short of that may lead to nutrient deficiency and even eating disorders. As with many fad diets, a too-low calorie diet plays havoc with your metabolism rate, causing it to malfunction, such that even when you eat less, you still gain more.
Eat normally and naturally. Your ancestors never went on a diet, so why should you? Starvation is not the answer to obesity problem.
Copyright (c) 2009 Stephen Lau
First, low calorie diets are focused on just minimizing the total daily calorie levels, regardless of anything else. Low calorie diet can be anything from just eating less regular food or eating those commercially prepared meals that are dangerously low in calorie level and are meant to replace meals. Keep in mind, these replacement meals are probably the worst you can do. Now, initially, you definitely will lose weight and it will be mostly body fat, which is a good thing. But this is not a normal response or even a normal method of losing weight.
By reducing the calorie levels, you are essentially throwing your body into starvation mode, which is the only reason you are losing body fat. During starvation mode, since you are not eating enough calories, your body automatically uses the fat stored in your body to burn as energy. Your body cannot sustain this for very long because those stores of body fat are created through eating healthy. Once those are gone, your body will naturally begin to use muscle mass as energy. This is completely self-defeating if you are genuinely intent on losing weight.
So really, what these low calorie diets are doing is effectively making you weaker by taking away your muscle mass through starving yourself. This is completely the same as shooting yourself in the foot because you need the muscle mass to keep your metabolism as effective and efficient as possible to help you lose weight healthfully. Now if you do not care about being healthy, then yes, you can use those replacement meals and see where they take you. But for those of you who want to live a full, healthy life, avoid replacement meals.
And here is the other way these low calorie diets suck: once you lose the weight, it is normal to think that you can go back to eating regular food and at the regular amounts you used to. Well, the problem is that, yes you are increasing the calorie levels to a normal, healthy level but you will not lose weight. In fact, you will actually gain weight because during that little binge with low calorie meals, you probably significantly lowered your metabolism rate. Ah, you see now, right? Once you lower your metabolism rate, your body does not and will not burn fat as readily as before. So when you bump up the calorie levels per day, you are eating more but your body is burning less and storing more fat, which automatically equals weight GAIN!
So all that time and money spent on trying to lose weight through low calorie diets has now gone down the drain! You are back to where you were when you started. Actually, you are probably in a worse state since you have lost some level of your metabolism! So now you are at a disadvantage.
Then what do you do at this point? Well, if you have not learned that the low calorie diets are the cause, then you might just end up going back to the low calorie diets since they seemed, emphasis on seemed, to work when you were on them. So after you have gained back the weight, you end up going on the low calorie diet again and lose the weight. And now you have started the horrible cycle of weight gain and weight loss, affectionately called the Yo Yo Diet.
So how do you avoid the Yo Yo Diet? Simple, you have to eat healthy, normal calorie-level foods in roughly 5-6 small meals per day and you must exercise. It is really that simple; the only question is your determination. This method will give you great results that are actually permanent, no back and forth going on. The best part, healthy eating and exercise is about the only way to keep the weight off for good with no negative side effects. So what are you waiting for? Lose those replacement meals and get yourself on a healthy weight loss plan that works!
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Stephen Lau has sinced written about articles on various topics from Chocolate and Health, Fitness and Disease & illness. Stephen Lau is a researcher and writer. He has recently published a 300-page e-book entitled "YOUNGER AND HEALTHIER FOR LONGER - A Handbook for Both Men and Women" which focuses on the physical, the mental, the intellectual, the emotional, and the spiritu. Stephen Lau's top article generates over 9900 views. to your Favourites.
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