Diets Stink - Here's What Works Instead

Warm weather will be here again some day and you're determined to be ready this time around. Are you on a low calorie diet that promises to have you fit and fabulous in no time? If so, I suggest you read this article carefully. I bet you'll change your plans after you read why diets don't work!

We all know people who tried this or that popular low calorie diet, but eventually quit. Sometimes it is because the plan just didn't work for them. That is, some people find that despite all the marvelous claims of the diet plan marketing gurus, after a few weeks that they had lost no weight. Others found that they lost a lot of weight the first week or two, but then got stuck or even started regaining what they had lost.

Finally, a few reported that they had seen real weight-loss results with their plan, but got so tired and hungry and grumpy that the results weren't worth it. That's no surprise. Most of the diets out there call for you to cut way back on calories and basically starve yourself. Nobody can stick with a plan like that for long.

Except in very rare cases, nobody seems to have much real, long-term success with a low-calorie diet. There are two big reasons why dieting like this isn't going to get you the body you want.

The number one reason why all those fancy new diet plans don't work (or the boring old ones for that matter) is that when go on one of these diets, you are cutting way back on the number of calories you consume. That can cause you to lose weight, but if you eat too few calories for too long, your body sees that as a signal that there's a food shortage and goes into starvation mode. And when you are in starvation mode, you experience a number of really unpleasant side effects.

We already talked about how the people who had the most success with their diets became tired and grumpy and constantly hungry. That's the way your body reacts to starvation.

And those are just the obvious problems, the ones that are visible to the casual observer. Things are even worse internally.

Spend more than a few days in starvation mode and your metabolism will slow down. Your body does this to conserve energy and help you get through the apparent food shortage. This means your body burns less fat and does everything it can to hold on to store as much of your food as it can in the form of fat!

And that isn't all. Stay in starvation mode too long, and your body starts breaking down your muscles and even your bones to stay alive. So instead of burning the fat like you want, your body hangs onto the fat and burns the muscle and bone you need to stay healthy.

So despite the misery you endure when your body is in starvation mode, and the declining numbers on the scale, you may actually be increasing your body fat percentage by storing fat and burning up everything else. You may weigh less, but your body composition could well be worse at the end of your diet than at the beginning.

In short, for the measure that matters the most to your health, your body fat percentage, a 'successful' diet often leaves you worse off than you were before. Clearly not what you had in mind or worth the discomfort and hassles of going on the diet in the first place!

The healthiest and fittest people, the ones you want to be like, don't get that way by following the latest fad diet and starving themselves. They eat a reasonable amount of food and do the things that cause their bodies to burn fat while maintaining or even increasing their muscle mass. They follow a proven fitness plan that shows you how to do what works instead of what's hot and trendy.

You can be like these people. Skip the stupid diet. Find yourself a proven program to burn the fat off your body while preserving the muscle and bone you need to be healthy.