The One and Only Way to Lose Weight
There really is only one way to lose weight. You have to burn more calories than you use in a day. It sounds clinical and counting calories is probably going to be involved. Every weight loss program on the market today uses one or a combination of the following methods. So whether you do it yourself or through weight loss programs, this is the only way you will lose weight.
Eat less calories than you use in a day. You have to make your body convert stored fat into calories for energy. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to eat less food. But you are going to have to modify your eating habits. More on that later. Unfortunately, your body can also use muscle as energy too. As a survival instinct, your body is programmed to keep as much stored energy as possible. When you start to eat fewer calories than your body normally uses in a day it will begin to think that food is not as plentiful.
You will begin going into starvation mode. Your metabolism will slow down to use as little energy as possible to get through whatever hard times your body thinks it is going through. Fat is the storage vehicle for your body’s energy. But energy can come from both fat and muscle. Muscle, however, uses energy. So it makes sense that your body would use your muscle first and then go after the fat.
Exercise will preserve the muscle you have, and it will increase the amount of fat you burn. As long as you are not eating more than normal to compensate for the exercise, you should be burning more calories and hopefully building muscle which will require more energy and thus also burn more calories even when you aren’t exercising. It’s always good to check with a health care professional before beginning any exercise program to see how much exercise you are allowed. Of course, different exercises will use more calories than others.
Tags: building muscle, counting calories, eating habits, exercise program, exercises, fewer calories, health care, metabolism, starvation mode, storage, survival instinct, weight loss program, weight loss programs