Weight Loss And The Plateau
Most diets deliver pretty instant results. Unless you're bending the rules you should see some movement downwards in your weight. Just when you are enjoying the fruits of your success and starting to tell the world how clever you've been, everything stops!
Going on a diet gives your body a bit of a shock. It has got used to the daily excess of calories and knows that it's not going to get stressed taking exercise because you don't do any. When all of a sudden you decide to go on a diet and move yourself a little more than usual, it comes as a bit of a rude awakening.
Depriving your body of the calories sends out a signal that it interprets as there is going to be a shortage of food. It may not be life threatening, but the level of change in your daily calorie intake causes it to go into protection mode. It closes down and stores whatever energy it can. It makes you hungry so that you go and find more to eat. All this is why you feel lousy on a diet.
Your body's reaction to having its usual large helpings of high calorific food cut off, is to react as if the end of the world is nigh, and close down. It tries to protect itself from what it thinks is famine and slows down your metabolism - in other words you become less efficient at burning calories.
This is our body's built-in survival instinct. You could take in more calories, but then again your metabolism might still be slow and you'll end up with more fat than before.
Dramatically reducing your calorie intake and you will give yourself problems. Mess with your body's natural rhythm or change its balance, its homeostasis, and you will run into problems. This is really why most diets don't work.
This is why you need to get change your habits into slim habits if you want to achieve permanent weight loss. It is a simple yet effective way of slimming.
The secret is actually not to go on a diet at all. What you need to be thinking about is changing your behaviors. Examine them and find out which ones made you overweight in the first place. Then you need to learn new habits - slim habits.
