Principles of Diet and Weight Loss

Diet can mean two very different things; one meaning is something we do in order to lose weight, a set of rules to follow to this end, a second meaning is a general eating habit, which will be different for each person.

People generally diet for one of a couple of reasons, they either want to lose weight (slim down) or they have a health issue that requires better eating habits.

When you diet to lose weight, you need to ask yourself one key question, “Am I losing weight to weigh less or to slim down?” This question is so important it determines how you will approach your diet.  I’ve seen way too much dependency on the bathroom scale from dieters and not enough on how well their clothes fit or how they are toning up.  This can lead to multiple problems; the biggest of which is you could lose as much muscle as fat.  If the purpose of your diet is to slim down and look better then judging your success solely by the bathroom scale will only prove a hindrance to your ultimate goal.

I have a large problem with a lot of the mainstream diets out there in they although they help you lose weight, they are often fairly unhealthy and do nothing to help you keep the weight off once it's lost.  When a diet prevents you from eating a wide range of foods or forces you to eat a very low amount of calories you will have a much larger chance of failure.  You should avoid any of these extreme diets at all costs, both for your health and your long-term weight loss goals.

Losing Weight

L et’s cover briefly how weight is lost, and by weight I’m talking about fat, not water weight (which is all too common).  Fat is just excess energy stored for later use, so to lose weight basically all you have to do is provide your body with less energy than it wants.  So, by depriving your body of calories (the energy that it uses to run) you will force it to pull energy from other sources, including fat and muscle.  This is where a bit of exercise comes into play.  Yes, you can lose weight without any real activity however you will be more likely to lose more of the weight from muscle loss, this is a poor quality weight loss, it won’t help your toning, and in the end will only slow your progress.

So, keeping all the muscle that you currently have, or even adding some will greatly assist you in your weight loss endeavors.  Unlike fat, your body needs to burn calories to keep muscle around, so, by adding some muscle through light resistance training, you will be upping the amount of calories your body needs to burn every day just to stay going.  So, by not exercising, your body will think that it doesn't need all the muscle you have, thus burning it for energy, and when that happens you will use less energy just to stay alive, thus making it even harder to continue losing weight.

So as much as we hate to do it, exercise is critical in losing weight, so do it.  Find a partner, find a sport or activity, anything you can do to keep that muscle around will greatly assist you in achieving your weight loss goal.