Low calorie dieting slows your metabolism, making it progressively more difficult to lose weight and keep it off. The failure rate of most diets is very high, yet people continue to try one after another, always hoping that each new scheme will provide the solution. If you’re a veteran of the diet selections (Atkins, South Beach, cabbage), the answer to your dilemma is muscle. Let’s examine why diets fail and how strength training and a healthy appetite can increase your metabolism.
Dieting fails due to a combination of hormonal changes, muscle loss, and frustration. When your body consumes fewer calories than it should, the natural response is to conserve fat. This may have been important for your distant ancestors trying to survive a famine, but the "starvation response" and its associated hormonal changes make life challenging for many dieters.
If dieters consume fewer calories than they should for a long period of time, the body begins to break down muscle tissue for fuel. When protein is broken down, it releases nitrogen. Your body will quickly wash away the nitrogen by releasing water from tissue cells, causing an immediate reduction in water weight and a noticeable drop on the scale. Sound familiar? However, water and muscle loss is nothing to sing about. The water weight will be quickly return as soon as you consume fluids, and the missing muscle can wreak havoc on your metabolism for a long time.
Muscle is a metabolically active tissue. It requires a certain number of calories each day to maintain itself. Therefore, the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn even when you’re just sitting around. As your muscle mass drops, so does your daily calorie requirement. For example, a dieter loses 5 pounds of muscle (along with 10 lbs. of fat) on a strict diet. Suppose each pound of muscle had been burning 50 calories a day during inactivity. Those 5 pounds of muscle had been burning 250 calories a day. With this muscle tissue gone, the dieter must now consume 250 fewer calories a day in order to maintain that weight-loss.
However, most dieters won’t maintain the starvation routine for long. They’ll eventually return to their old eating habits. When this happens, the weight eventually returns. The problem is that while they lost both muscle and fat during the diet, they will gain back mainly fat when not exercising. So, even though they may weigh the same as they did when they started, they now have a lot more fat and a lot less muscle than they did before the diet. This means the metabolism is slower and the calorie requirements is lower.
The solution to this dilemma is an active lifestyle that includes aerobic exercise, a weight-training program, and a healthy diet. What is a healthy diet? A healthy diet is based around whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, and lean protein. A healthy diet keeps your metabolism in high gear with 4 to 6 small meals a day. No food is off-limits, but consumption of sweets and high fat junk food should be reduced. A healthy diet is realistic and permanent; not something you endure for a short 3 month period and them go back to eating "normal". It is truly a LIFESTYLE instead of a "diet".
During strength training it is possible to get smaller and not lose much weight or even slightly gain at the same time. Muscle is a much denser tissue than fat. A pound of muscle is very solid, while a pound of fat is like a big fluffy bunch of feathers. The fat takes up more space on your body. You are losing inches at this point instead of pounds and your clothes will start to feel different. Rely on how your feel and look. The scale can be misleading and discourage you when you are doing a great job.
The final note is that you want to make healthy and positive changes rather than punishing your body and your spirit with low calorie consumption. Your goal is the healthy body of a naturally lean person who can enjoy what they eat.
