Although many of us might have heard of the popular dieting habit these days called the shifting calorie diet, most of us would not be aware of how it works physically. To consider how this diet has been effective, we must first consider how traditional dieting failed to cure obesity.
The logic of the traditional ‘starvation’ diet is simply ‘eat less and lose weight’. This may sound literal and superficial. However, losing or gaining weight does not entirely depend on the type and amount of calorie intake of the individual.
This is due to the changes that occur in the body during a starvation diet. When the body undergoes starvation, it senses that it is under attack, and it acts to protect its fat stores, which it holds onto so that it can find food in times of emergency.Seeing this starvation diet as an emergency, the body lowers its metabolic rate and begins to store as much food as possible in the form of fat. Thus, more food than ever before is turned into fat, while the body chooses instead to consume muscle tissue for its energy.
This physiological adaptation of the body to calorie deprivation will result in water loss as the body attempts to flush out toxic metabolic by-products. This water loss initially leads to weight loss. But this is only temporary as the water weight can be regained after resuming a normal diet. In addition, it can also cause excess weight gain in the form of fat – at the same time as normal muscle loss.
The calorie shifting diet takes a different approach. In this method, you continually vary the amount of food and calories you consume, and still maintain the proper nutritional balance in your diet to avoid the muscle loss associated with traditional dieting.
By dividing meals 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 consuming a healthy amount of food per day. You can eat as much as you want at each small meal, but you should stop when you feel a little hungry. This shifting is the key to the calorie diet’s success.
Like most healthy diets, the shifting calorie diet approach will benefit from having an overall healthy lifestyle with a moderate amount of exercise. There’s no reason to overdo it, especially in the beginning. Even a short walk every day can work wonders when combined with a shifting calorie diet approach.
Traditional starvation dieting just doesn’t work. Worse, it may be doing more harm than good, and is definitely not good for your body. By using a shifting calorie diet, you can burn that extra fat (not muscle) and eat the things you normally eat in abundance.
Source by Kevin Prott
