Low Calorie Diet – Why Does it Set you Up for a Nasty Fall?
Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 at
10:17 am
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?
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.
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?
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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Tagged with: Little Food • Longest Time • Metabolism • Whole Lot
Filed under: Fitness • Nutrition • Runner's Health • Training
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It’s always great for this kind of info to be broadcast. Calorie counting seems so simple, but can get so complicated. In the realm of calorie counters, what you are speaking of is called “starvation” mode. Generally, men should eat no lower than 1500 calories and women should eat no lower than 1200. The science being that your body must have that minimum in order to operate its organs and so forth. Furhtermore, those numbers are just averages. To be more specfic, one should eat no lower than their basal metabolic rate (BMR) or else the risk of going into starvaton mode increases. Yet, there is a way that one can go below their BMR. This is called zig zagging calories. Basically, your going for a weekly average. One day you eat a low amount, the next day you eat a much higher amount and so on. This tricks the body into thinking that its getting enough, but in reality your creating a huge caloric deficit. With that said, the the healthy range for a caloric deficit is between 500 and 1000 calories a day (max two pounds a week since one pound of fat is 3500 calories.)Darnit, I had to go an make everything more complicated =)
Matt
physicalgodliness.blogspot.com
Caloric Restriction with Optimal Nutrition, CRON for short, is an approach to longevity with a huge following due to it being the only scientifically proven way to lengthen life in a wide range of mammals. It doesn’t mean constant hunger, it doesn’t have to mean counting every calorie (but often does), and the Optimal Nutrition portion of the diet ensures that starvation is avoided. CRONies as they call themselves are not into anorexia. They are into educating themselves on the healthiest and most filling foods available in the range of calories they have decided to consume. Why is CRON so rare and fringe? Probably because most people are unwilling to give up their unhealthy standard Western diet and the rest are too lazy to learn how to achieve their goals. Either way, I would encourage you both to look further into CRON.
Try the Calorie Restriction Society’s email discussion list. Try Matthew Lake’s Blog. Read Roy Walford’s (father of CRON) books or “Living the CR Way”.