Wanna Lose Belly Fat? Don’t Diet-Here’s Why

Stop dieting. Here’s another reason why it’s counter productive.

Typically, when most of use want to drop a few pounds quickly, we simply stop eating as much.  After all, less food taken in should mean you’ll lose weight quickly, right?  Not necessarily. 

Our bodies are very efficient at storing food as fat as a defense against starvation. When you cut your calories, and if you do it drastically enough, your body panics.  Think of it in terms of an army and its rations.

Body:                “Danger! Danger!  There’s not enough food!  We’re starving!”

Metabolism:    “Cut down on production men, we’re going into survival mode! Slow and steady!

Emphasis on the slow!”

Body:                “Just make sure we have enough fat stores to get through this famine”

Metabolism:    “Aye Aye Captain!”

Orders have been given and voila’, thunder thighs are born.  Or Jelly Bellies, saggy arms, double chins, saddle bags and any number of fat stores are created in order to make sure that your body doesn’t starve.  Think of it as the general of an army, laying in stores for a very long winter. When your body is in survival mode, it takes fewer calories to sustain itself, to maintain its current weight.  Excess calories are stored as fat and the stores are parceled out to the soldiers reluctantly and very s l o w l y in order to make sure the resources last as long as possible.

Severe restriction of calories is a sure fire way to cause your metabolism to slow down to a crawl.  If you’ve been crash dieting for years without exercising then your metabolism has been affected.  Dieting like this burns muscle and the less muscle mass you have, the less calories you burn and the slower your metabolism. You will now need fewer calories to maintain your current weight.  This means that if you consume more calories, your body won’t need to use them for energy and will store them.  ”Helloooo” belly fat.

When you put the weight back on, and you will if you’ve been crash dieting, then it will be put back on as fat.  This means that your metabolic rate has probably dropped a little bit each time that you’ve crash dieted. Putting on more fat and losing muscle will cause your metabolism to slow down even more. It seems like a cycle of doom, doesn’t i?  It can be if you don’t break that cycle.

Tomorrow we will start to show you just how to increase your metabolism in order to burn the most calories possible, even when you’re sleeping.