Weight Loss Diets – Facts About The Causes Of Weight Gain
When it comes to healthy quick weight loss diets, knowledge is power – usually. The problem is the weight loss diet industry is so financially lucrative that all kinds of ‘false’ knowledge has made its way into common folklore.
Contradictory advice over whether you should eat more protein or eat more carbohydrates on your quick weight loss diets, whether they should be eaten separately or together, whether to eat more fiber, eat more fruit, watch calories, watch the glycaemic index, and any other more wacky variations. Instead, it is important to realize that there are just three basic facts that will ensure you lose weight on any type of quick weight loss diet:
- Eat only when you’re hungry.
- Don’t eat more than you need.
- Keep your body on the move.
Keep aware of these three basic principles and your path to success will be simple.
Fact: if you eat more than your body can burn off, you will gain weight.
Regardless of your body’s metabolic rate or your choice of food, if you are eating more than your body can burn up, you will gain weight. The bottom line is based on the simple equation that calorific input should not exceed energy output, so you’ve got three things you can do to lose weight:
- Reduce food input so you eat no more than satisfies you.
- Increase energy output so that you are doing more work.
Ensure the process that turns your food into energy is working efficiently and not trying to conserve your energy for a rainy day. You can help achieve this by eating a healthy and varied diet that is low in saturated fats, salt and sugar.
Fact: if you eat at any time when you’re not hungry, you are overeating.
If you are routinely eating for reasons other than hunger, but just can’t stop, even though you are storing excess fat, which you know is making you miserable, overeating has become a problem for you. There are many reasons why you might eat when you’re not hungry, and it will help you to control your cravings if you take time to recognize your food triggers. Ask yourself:
- When was the last time your stomach actually rumbled?
- How do you decide when it’s time to eat?
- When do you know when to stop eating?
The bottom line here is that if you’re not eating directly in response to your natural hunger, you are overeating.
Fact: there’s no such thing as a ‘fast’ metabolism, but you can help it to be more efficient.
Your metabolic rate is the amount of energy used up by your body to keep its systems and muscles alert and moving over time. Metabolism is a chemical process that operates at roughly the same speed all the time – if you follow very low calorie weight loss diets you risk greatly reducing the rate at which your body burns energy. What changes when the metabolism increases is the ‘amount’ of fuel you burn each day. You can increase the number of calories you burn by taking more exercise, but it will make no difference to the rate at which you burn calories. The most efficient way to boost the number of calories you burn each day is not through a fast weight loss diet plan, but to build more muscle and to keep physically on the move so that more calories are needed to fuel your body and maintain your body strength.