So you have tried dieting to reduce weight. You have also popped all kinds of weight reduction pills you can get your hands on. To your delight your effort seemed to work as you begin to lose body fat steadily. Then one day, before you reach your desired weight, you begin to notice that your weight seemed to stay the same even though you are still on the diet and popping those pills. To your horror, you discover that the weight you had lost is beginning to pile up once again. Instead of reducing weight, you are now gaining weight. Sounds familiar?
What happened? Simply put, slimming pills and fad diets are only short term strategy to reduce weight and keeping body fat at bay. To reduce weight and lose fat forever, your caloric expenditure must surpass your caloric consumption. Aren’t you doing that in your diet? Yes you are. But when you are on a diet, you go hungry and your body will signal to your brain to conserve fat for energy because your body is built with a mechanism to conserve fat during famine and it will not know whether it is famine season or that you are on a diet. In this instance, your body will consume your muscle for energy instead of your body fat and this spells trouble because your muscle is a great calorie gobbler. So with less muscle, your fat burning capability grinds to a screeching halt.
What about those weight reducing pills you are taking? If you are popping appetite control pills, your body will react like you are on a diet, so the same thing happened. What about pills that help to increase metabolism or reducing starch intake? Sure, they will help to burn a few calories or restrict some calories from turning into body fat, but are enough calories burnt or restricted to reduce weight permanently or are you going to take those unhealthy weight reduction pills forever? Obviously not, isn’t it?
So to reduce weight and lose fat forever, we need to do 3 things.
• Cardio exercises – Do cardio exercises at 65-85% of your maximum heart rate to burn tons of calories
• Lift weight – Train with weights to grow muscle or at least prevent muscle loss. The more muscle you have, the higher will be your natural fat burning capability. You will burn fat even when sleeping. In other words, you lose fat permanently.
• Eat small frequent meals – This will signal to your brain that food is in abundance and that your body need not conserve fat in case of famine. So eat 5- 6 meals at 3 hourly intervals. However, do make sure that your meals are small and that your caloric intake do not surpass your caloric expenditure.
When you incorporate these 3 elements into your lifestyle, you will not only reduce weight and lose body fat, you will also keep the weight from creeping back. That means, you will reduce weight and able to maintain your ideal weight forever.