Perhaps 75 million people are on some type of diet in this country. Thanks to the mass media, and endless commercials, millions more are beginning a diet every day. Some are successful and lose weight, but many gain it back. Diets whose goal is rapid weight loss are not effective in promoting overall health, just the opposite is true, many types of diets are harmful. Crash diets aren't effective because the body quickly adjusts to a lower food intake by lowering its metabolic rate, which is the rate at which food is burned for energy. This mechanism is the result of the adaptations of man over thousands of years. The body resists the burning of fat. If the result of such a diet is a loss of 12 pounds, the body adjusts to having less food, when food intake is restored to normal levels, the body treats the food an an excess and stores it as fat.
The early success in a strict diet is usually due to water loss, and not fat. A restricted carbohydrate intake, reduces the water stores in the body. When fluid balance is restored, the scale does not show the loss that the dieter thought took place.
Further, on a strict diet, muscle tissue is lost as well as fat. The more dieting, the greater the amount of muscle tissue is lost compared to fat. The sad result is that the dieter is actually fatter, when viewed as a percentage of weight than before undertaking the diet, because the ratio of fat weight to lean body weight increases.
The goal of every dieter should be to reduce weight without losing muscle tissue. Those who put themselves on the dieting, gaining weight, and dieting again merry-go-round are weakening their body every time they diet. One may see this up and down in weight, occuring in the lives of friends and people in the public eye.
It is wrong-headed thinking and has a deleterious effect on the body and is wrong for the hoped for permanent loss of body fat.
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