Dieting sucks, especially in today's society where food is so readily accessible. Everywhere you look there is a stand offering food that is loaded with calories and is 'bad' for those trying to lose weight. Food companies - especially fast food companies have huge advertising budgets, and they spend millions on market research to see how best to tempt potential customers into purchasing their product.
It is almost like they are working against you personally, with that little voice in your head telling you it will be alright to just have a chocolate biscuit today because you can cut back on the amount you eat tomorrow. It is like you have a huge foe bombarding you with 'loaded offers' from close quarters and you have to stand and face this bombardment all alone - dieting sucks.
Not only are you being bombarded, but you are also being attacked from the other side because the people who promote diets are telling you that food is the enemy and to lose weight you must cut the calories.
Talk about dealing blows to your self esteem, one side promoting all these great tasting goodies and the other side telling you that you can't have them because if you do, you will be a failure. On top of this you look at friends and colleagues that seem to be able to eat what they like and never put an ounce on.
Dieting really sucks - and there must be a better way.
I don't know about you, but I have asked myself 'if calorie counting diets don't work, what does' there must be a better way. I may not be the most self disciplined person in the world but I certainly am not the worst in the world either, and the feeling of always being hungry is hard to put up with day in day out. I have also pondered why 2 people can eat basically the same things and 1 person becomes overweight while the other person does not, something doesn't seem right. I know a lot of factors can affect the preceding statement such as the amount of exercise that both people complete, but so often people that eat and do the same things end up vastly different in their weight.
I decided to do a little 'digging around' to find out why this might happen and I believe the answer lies in a person's metabolism. A person with a higher metabolism burns calories faster than a person with a slower metabolism, therefore 2 people eating the same things, the person with the higher metabolism will burn more calories in the same amount of time compared to the person with the slower metabolism.
The obvious next question was 'how do I increase my metabolism'? Do I have to become an elite athlete and be fit enough to run a half marathon. I found that fitness helps but is not the most important thing. I was glad to learn that my daily walk was sufficient because I really enjoy my 'mynd time' when walking. I know some people find it hard to exercise, so it is comforting to know exercise is not the be all and end all of increasing your metabolism.
What I did find was that the things that affect your metabolism the most are the kinds of foods that you eat, and the frequency that you eat food. I found this hard to believe, but you increase your metabolism by eating more frequently, which flies in the face of traditional weight loss programs. At last some dieting information that promotes eating and not 'food is the enemy'. Just don't tell the fast food companies or we will end up with the 'increased metabolism quarter pounder' being promoted all over the place.
To learn more about increasing your metabolism visit Increase Your Metabolism for Easy Permanent Weight Loss and forget about always feeling hungry.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Speed Metabolism for Easy Permanent Weight Loss
Your metabolism is simply the amount of calories that your body burns to maintain life. So if you have a slow metabolism, unless you have a low calorie intake, your calories intake will exceed the amount of calories that you burn and your body ends up storing the additional calories as fat.
Traditional weight loss diets teach us that in order to lose weight we must feed our body with fewer calories, so that the body burns more calories than what is being fed into the body. This forces the body to use up some of its reserves of energy (fat) and thus weight loss is achieved. At the beginning of a diet this works fine, but it is not sustainable for a number of reasons:
* At the beginning of a diet people are more diligent in abiding by the ‘rules’. But people’s enthusiasm wanes after a period, when day after day they are left feeling hungry and lethargic because they are required to lower their calorie intake. Also it is easier to diet at the start because everything is new and different to what they have done previously. Initially people see some positive results and are happy to put up with feeling hungry and lethargic because they are losing weight. Eventually the weight loss results slow down and people give up because they are unwilling to continue to make the necessary sacrifices when they are not seeing the results that they wish to see.
* After a short period of time of reducing your calorie intake, your body goes into survival mode. It slows down your metabolism to compensate for the reduced calorie intake. This is why you start to feel lethargic and weak because your body is conserving energy. If your calorie intake is reduced to 1500 calories per day, your metabolism will slow down so that you burn approximately 1500 calories per day. You end up with no further weight loss unless you further reduce your calorie intake, which is called starving yourself and is not healthy. Any program that is based on reducing calorie intake is doomed to ‘fail’ because your body has the ability to adjust itself to its daily calorie intake.
What hope is there of losing weight with a slow metabolism
It is not all doom and gloom. The easiest and best way to enjoy sustained weight loss is to increase your metabolism. This means that your body is burning calories at a greater rate than your calorie intake. Does that mean that you have to run a marathon to increase your metabolism? Not at all, exercise is important to general health, but increased metabolism is not dependent on exercise. Increased metabolism is dependent on eating the ‘correct’ calories and also eating at the correct intervals.
There has been a number of exciting developments in weight loss programs that concentrate on increasing metabolism rather than reducing calorie intake. There has been a fantastic success rate with these programs because you are not left feeling hungry and weak all the time, therefore participants do not find it hard to ‘stick at it’. Visit Speed Metabolism to learn about these exciting new developments.
Traditional weight loss diets teach us that in order to lose weight we must feed our body with fewer calories, so that the body burns more calories than what is being fed into the body. This forces the body to use up some of its reserves of energy (fat) and thus weight loss is achieved. At the beginning of a diet this works fine, but it is not sustainable for a number of reasons:
* At the beginning of a diet people are more diligent in abiding by the ‘rules’. But people’s enthusiasm wanes after a period, when day after day they are left feeling hungry and lethargic because they are required to lower their calorie intake. Also it is easier to diet at the start because everything is new and different to what they have done previously. Initially people see some positive results and are happy to put up with feeling hungry and lethargic because they are losing weight. Eventually the weight loss results slow down and people give up because they are unwilling to continue to make the necessary sacrifices when they are not seeing the results that they wish to see.
* After a short period of time of reducing your calorie intake, your body goes into survival mode. It slows down your metabolism to compensate for the reduced calorie intake. This is why you start to feel lethargic and weak because your body is conserving energy. If your calorie intake is reduced to 1500 calories per day, your metabolism will slow down so that you burn approximately 1500 calories per day. You end up with no further weight loss unless you further reduce your calorie intake, which is called starving yourself and is not healthy. Any program that is based on reducing calorie intake is doomed to ‘fail’ because your body has the ability to adjust itself to its daily calorie intake.
What hope is there of losing weight with a slow metabolism
It is not all doom and gloom. The easiest and best way to enjoy sustained weight loss is to increase your metabolism. This means that your body is burning calories at a greater rate than your calorie intake. Does that mean that you have to run a marathon to increase your metabolism? Not at all, exercise is important to general health, but increased metabolism is not dependent on exercise. Increased metabolism is dependent on eating the ‘correct’ calories and also eating at the correct intervals.
There has been a number of exciting developments in weight loss programs that concentrate on increasing metabolism rather than reducing calorie intake. There has been a fantastic success rate with these programs because you are not left feeling hungry and weak all the time, therefore participants do not find it hard to ‘stick at it’. Visit Speed Metabolism to learn about these exciting new developments.
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