I get tired of watching the latest and greatest crazy diet fads come and go. You have probably heard that the whole diet industry makes their money by taking advantage of fat people.
It is true
The reason that the diet industry is screwing over fat people is because almost every diet out there has some magic bullet in it. Eat this and lose weight, avoid that and lose weight. Lose weight eating cookies, lose weight drinking sweetened lemon juice.
Most of it is crap and we all have to realize that. Every time I go to the bookstore I get intrigued and then leave shaking my head.
The trouble is there is no magic bullet. Losing weight always comes down to bringing in less calories than are going out. The trouble is there are lots of variables and the diet makers are always looking to exploit people that are having trouble losing weight by depressing people, confusing them, and then offering the newest magic to lose weight.
Don’t fall for it.
Only Three Things Matter for Losing Weight
What you really need to lose weight is to get your eating under control, your metabolism high, and your exercise up. Lets just looks at these three pieces in isolation
Get you Eating Under Control – almost everyone gets portion control wrong. Your body is a machine and whatever food you can not use your body will just eliminate or store. If you have a burger, fries, and soft drink then no matter what crazy diet you would use you will still have to burn off that 1100 calories or so and it is just not possible, so you eliminate some and store the rest. Now if you eat a normal meal which would be about 400 calories or so you would not be hungry but not full either.
Now again if you eat just the hamburger for a meal you may drop the calorie count but you are not getting the nutrients and vitamins that you need and also you are getting a lot of those calories from artery clogging fat. So if you just had fruit and veggies and lean meat in your diet then that 400 calories would go a lot further and keep you healthier.
Is Running Healthy
Get a Higher Metabolism – This is a bit stranger to look at. Your body really just runs like it should. Your body burns calories to keep everything going, your muscles healed, maintaining your organs and giving you the energy to run or not or whatever you need to do as you have over the last little while.
When you look at your metabolism this way then it is obvious that your metabolism is naturally going to be faster when you are working out a lot (your body is prepping for your lifestyle) and your metabolism will be slower if your are in an office and then living on the couch all evening (the most your body needs to do is get you to the fridge) so your exercise history over the last little while will make a difference to how many calories you burn at rest. Still this is only going to make a smaller difference then eating or exercise.
Get Your Exercise Up – The third piece of the calorie in/calorie out equation is your exercise. If you were to walk well and burn 350 calories in an hour or run hard and burn 1500 calories in the same hour you are doing three things that are helping you. You are raising your resting metabolism, your are making your body work better an more efficiently, and of course you are burning up those calories.
So exercise is going to make a big difference not just for that one workout a day but also the other extraneous exercise. Walking to work, biking with the kids, doing laundry. An active lifestyle means that you are letting it all add up and burning more and more calories as you get stronger and better. Just think, how long would it take for you to going from walking for an hour to running fast for an hour and burning 5 times the calories in an hour.
What About Diet Plans
So bearing in mind these three critical points to losing weight where does everything else fall? Did you know that there are over 37,000 diet books on Amazon.com?
Well if we look at the GI Diet, the Atkins diet, the Mediterranean Diet, in fact any kind of Carb restricting or Fat restricting diets is that the diet itslef is based on moving around your carbs, fat, and protein and these can be important but not as important as eating and exercising right.
The other diets that we see are centred around a food or pill. Eating Acai berrys, or PGX pills are only going to have a small factor on increasing metabolism and do all their work in reducing your hunger.
Finally we have specialized diets like Paleo Diet, Vegan Diet, non-wheat diets, and carb cycling diets. These have their place and the thing that I really like about these diets is that they use science as well as a very passionate group of people teaching others about the benefits of their particular diet.
This gets back to the two diets that I support here on the blog.
Fat Loss for Idiots – Based on what you like or don’t like this diet uses carb cycling to make an exact menu for you to eat. This diet tends to be very successful because you eat what is right and don’t have to become a dietitian to use it. I have more comments on the review for this diet than almost any other post and mostly because people are surprised and excited about the success.
Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle – This is a one book based diet and exercise program that a former bodybuilder teaches us how to eat and exercise to make sure that you lose weight and know how to do it. Tom Venuto is a guy with a track record and a best selling book for years teaching you how to lose the weight and keep it off.
Why Most Diets Suck,
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