Although a lot of us may have heard the popular dieting habit nowadays called the Shifting Calories diet, most of us may not be aware of the how this works physiologically. To have an inkling on how this diet has been effective, we have to have an idea first how the traditional dieting failed to cure obesity.

The principle behind traditional dieting is simply to "starve" the body. That is, if you eat less, you should lose weight. Sounds simple enough, but the truth is that traditional dieting usually does not take off pounds, and in fact, it can cause weight gain.

As you lower your daily intake of food, your body undergoes a series of hormonal and metabolic changes associated with starvation. It tries to store as much food as possible in a quick and easy way, resulting in more fat buildup. At the same time, it begins to break down muscle tissues for energy.

What happens next is that the body loses large amounts of water as it tries to flush out poisonous byproducts. To the untrained eye, this appears to be positive weight loss, but it isn't permanent. As soon as you return to your old eating paterns, that water weight returns, and usually brings more fat along with it. Meanwhile, you have lost considerable muscle tissue.

Calorie shifting diets take a different tact. In this method, you constantly change the amount of food and calories you take in, and yet maintain proper nutritional balance in your meals in order to avoid the muscle loss associated with traditional dieting.

By splitting meals up into 4 or more small meals a day and varying the types of food eaten, you can allow your body to burn excess fat while keeping to a healthy amount of food intake daily. You can eat as much as you want at each smaller meal, but you should stop while still just a little bit hungry. This is the key to the success of the shifting calories diet.

The shifting calories diet, like any other diets need to be supplemented with the right amount of regular exercise and other healthy habits to experience its maximum potential. No need to be very enthusiastic about it initially to overlook other essential factors. This diet can benefit wonderfully even with just a daily walk around the block.

Traditional starvation dieting just doesn't work. Worse, it can cause more harm than good, and is most definitely NOT good for your body. By using the shifting calories diet, you can burn off that excess fat (not muscle) and keep eating the things you normally would in plentiful amounts.