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In
order to lose weight, your body must burn more calories than it takes
in, but keep in mind that your body needs calories for energy and when
you exercise; your body needs even more calories.
Before I talk about
energy, the first thing you must understand is that losing weight and
losing fat is not the same thing. Just because you lose weight, does
not mean you lose fat, and just because you lose fat, does not mean
you lose weight. When people talk about losing weight, what they really
want to do is lose the excess fat on their body and obtain an
attractive figure.
When you eat, the body uses most of the calories
for energy. If you eat more calories than the body uses, it will get
stored as fat. If you do not consume enough calories per day you will
lose weight, but you will also lose energy. When you do not consume
enough energy (calories) for your body, it will start using up your
energy stores to make up for the energy deficiency. Unfortunately, the
energy stores used is not your stored fat, but instead it’s protein
and carbohydrates (carbs) that will supply most of the energy (stored
fat makes up a very small percentage). Your body will take the protein
and carbohydrates from your muscle cells; causing your muscle mass to
reduce (say good by to that toned attractive look) which forces your
metabolism to decrease (a low metabolism = slow or no fat burning).
When this happens your body requires less energy to maintain its new
lower body weight (remember the body weight is lower because you loss
muscle), which is why your body conserves energy by slowing down the
metabolism. In other words, the body has adapted to the new lower
energy (calorie) intake which means that you will no longer continue
to lose weight.
Keep in
mind that the weight you had lost in the first place was mostly water
weight and you will eventually gain it back in the form of fat, not muscle
(in order to get your muscle mass back to the way it was before, you have
to work on rebuilding it). When carbohydrates and protein that are already
in your body are used as the energy source, your body will lose water
weight because both carbohydrates and protein hold water in the cells. In
essence, you are dehydrating yourself to lose weight. So yes the scale
will go down, but approximately 75% (if not more) of it is water instead
of fat. And just so you know, exercising while consuming a small calorie
intake just makes the situation worse. This is because when you exercise,
you start burning off more energy and the more you workout, the more
energy your body needs. I already told you above where the energy comes
from, and if you do not give your body the energy it needs, it will just
feed on your muscles even quicker now that you are exercising. So eat more
food! In addition to this, when you cut down too much on your calorie
intake, your body will start storing calories because it doesn’t know when
you will eat again. The calories that are stored will be stored as fat. So
in other words, when your body is storing energy, it’s basically storing
more fat.
To
summarize my point: Not eating enough calories results in muscle loss,
dehydration, slower fat burning, and your body will always adapt to a
lower calorie intake.
Bottom
Line: if you can’t maintain that lower calorie intake for the rest of your
life, you will gain your weight back when you get tired of starving
yourself!
To lose
weight properly (burning fat) you must increase your metabolism (weight
training) and your need for oxygen (aerobics) while eating enough calories
each day (nutritious diet) to give you energy and maintain the protein in
your muscles because protein helps build muscles, which indirectly burns
fat. This brings up another good point: When you build muscle your weight
will increase because your muscles are made up of mostly water, but your
body fat percentage will decrease because building muscles increase your
metabolism (in other words, muscles way more than fat, but take up less
space than fat). So keep in mind that losing body fat can’t be measured by
a scale; use a measuring tape and also look at yourself in the mirror, and
then you will see the true results. One of the best ways to know if you
are losing more body fat than water is by using a body fat analyzer.
Make sure
that you focus on fat loss not weight loss. Your goal should be to lose
weight by burning fat, not losing water from your muscles. Remember this
when you choose your weight loss program.
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