One of the biggest misconceptions with dieting is that the fewer calories you eat the more weight you will lose. It’s true that in order to lose weight you need to either eat fewer calories or burn more calories so that you create a calorie deficit. However, if you cut out too many calories you may be doing more harm than good and could actually be making it harder to lose weight.

Since the beginning of man there have been times of feasting where food was plentiful and times of famine where there was no food to be found. Over the years our bodies evolved to deal with times of famine by clinging onto fat reserves and by slowing down the metabolism to burn fewer calories. This helped (and helps) people to stay alive for the longest time possible when a famine hit and to keep them from starving to death until the food supply returned to normal.

The problem with extremely low calorie diets is that when you cut your calories back too far your body decides that it must be a time of famine. As a result your metabolism slows down and your body jumps into “starvation mode”, hanging onto every bit of fat that it can in an effort to help you live through the famine.

Logically, of course, your brain knows that you are not starving to death and that all you need to do to get more food is to jump in the car and head down to your local grocery store. Your body, however, doesn’t know this and just reacts by slowing your metabolism. What this means is that when you eat too few calories on a diet it actually becomes harder to lose weight.

Not only that, but when you go off the diet and start eating normally again your metabolism can still be sluggish and your body will try to horde away any extra calories that you eat as fat in an effort to guard against the next period of famine. That means that any weight you may have lost on your extremely low calorie diet will be very easy to gain back when you off the diet.

Rather than going on a “starvation diet”, look for a diet plan that gives your body enough calories with foods that are packed with vitamins and nutrients. A good goal for weight loss is to cut 500 calories per day which will allow you to safely lose about a pound a week. If you can add exercise to that and burn more calories each day you can increase your weight loss by a pound or two a week more. Not only is losing weight this way better for your body, but the weight that you lose will be much more likely to stay off and you will be learning healthy eating habits that you can use for the rest of your life.

If 1-2 pounds per week is slower than you would like to lose weight there are ways that you can “trick” your body to help keep your metabolism from slowing down. One way to do this is by shifting the number of calories you eat each day so that your body doesn’t think that you are starving and doesn’t slow down your metabolism. A good diet that uses calorie shifting for faster weight loss is Fat Loss for Idiots which allows you to lose up to 9 pounds in 11 days. You can learn more about how the diet works by reading my Fat Loss for Idiots review and checking out the results that my friend had when she tried the diet. Click here to learn more.

_________________________________________________

Perhaps one of the greatest diet myths of our time is that low fat diets (or even no-fat diets) are the best way to lose weight. In actuality, though, low fat diets not only are not the best way to lose weight, but they can actually be unhealthy. Let’s take a look at why this is.

A lot of times when people go on a low fat diet they become so consumed with reading the fat content of foods that they forget to look at the calorie content. Sadly, low fat doesn’t mean low calorie. While in many cases low fat foods will have fewer calories than higher fat foods this isn’t always the case.

When the fat is removed from food a lot of times the texture and taste of the food really suffers. To make up for this the companies that make low fat foods will add sugars, starch, flour or other types of thickeners to help improve the texture of the food and to make it taste more like the higher fat version. Unfortunately, this can also mean added calories. In fact, sometimes low fat foods have more calories than higher fat foods!

There are also other health problems with following a strict low fat diet. Our bodies need fat in order to function properly. Fat provides energy and helps our bodies with tissue repair. Fats also help our bodies to absorb vitamins including A, D, E, and K. Without adequate fat intake our bodies don’t function properly. That means that when you cut your fat intake too low you may actually be doing more harm than good.

Of course, extremely high fat diets aren’t good for you either. The key is to find a good balance where you are getting enough fat for your body but not overdoing it. In a healthy diet about 30% of your daily calories should come from fat. Rather than focusing on eating strictly low fat foods, instead focus on cutting saturated fat and trans fat from your diet while eating unsaturated fats instead. Foods like olive oil, avocados and peanut butter are all good sources for unsaturated fat.

Another “good” fat is Omega-3 which can be found in oily fish like tuna or salmon as well as in dark green vegetables and nuts.

By eating foods that provide your body with both the right amount of fat and the vitamins and nutrients that your body needs you will feel fuller longer and will help reduce cravings making it easier in the long run to stick with your weight loss goals.

_______________________________________