The Common Dieters' Mistake: Thinking That Eating Less Is Better!, By: Hugo Rivera

When people think of a diet they think of pain, hunger and food depravation. Before we continue, lets stop right here and explain what is going on inside the body.

When people think of a diet they think of pain, hunger and food depravation. At first, most dieters reduce their food intake and see that in the first week they lose 10 pounds or so of weight. They say: "Great! In order to lose more weight I need to eat less."

After a few weeks they notice that they are not losing as fast as they had hoped for and then frustrated, if they are really determined to continue to lose weight they will start to starve themselves even more. Before we continue, lets stop right here and explain what is going on inside the body.

Why Eating Less Is Not The Answer!

The first week the subject lost weight as their metabolism got shocked by the lessened food intake. However, most of the weight was water and probably 3-4 pounds were fat. The second week the body, still not adjusted to the shock, continues to lose weight (even though not as fast as the first week). By the third week the body begins to take counter measures in order to adjust to the lowered caloric intake.

What do you do when your light bill goes up? You probably begin to save electricity in order to avoid losing money. The body, is just like you. When it sees that its metabolic costs are too high (in other words that is losing fat because the metabolism is too high) then it decides to save energy and lower the metabolism in an attempt to keep the save fat from burning.

Therefore, the subject sees that the weight loss either slows down or just comes to a standstill. The way you save electricity is by turning appliances off, etc. The way the body does it is by losing muscle since muscle is the most expensive tissue to maintain.

So by looking at the scenario above, lets see what may potentially happen to the subject that is determined to lose the weight but that does not know how to go about it.

As the subject notices that the weight loss comes to a halt, he/she decides to lower the calories again. For the first few weeks this works but afterwards the weight loss comes to a standstill again. After a few cycles of the same thing the subject continues a spiral downwards. By this point most people just forget about the diet and start eating everything in site.

They gain back all the weight and then some (remember it will be easier for them to gain weight now as they lowered their metabolism by using the wrong dieting practices). Other dieters (a very small amount) unfortunately turn anorexic.