The idea that the best way to lose weight quickly is to eat less calories is a myth. Low-calorie diets and counting calories does nothing to help you lose weight and can turn a person into an obsessive eater which can lead to eating disorders. For those who do not believe this, a small study was conducted by The Sunday Times Magazine took two people who were similar in weight and put them on diets. One diet was the original Fatburner Diet which included 1500 calories per day and the other was the Cambridge Diet which was only 300 calories at the time.
Which dieter lost the most weight? The Fatburner dieter did. In fact, they lost much more weight in only six weeks then did the dieter on the Cambridge plan. The reason for this is that the low-calorie method is missing the process the speeds up metabolism. Metabolism is the bodies’ process of taking food and turning it into fuel for energy, therefore burning up unwanted fat.
Though metabolism varies between different people, it is easy to see that obese people have much slower rates of metabolism then non-obese people. Because of these things, the low-cal diet just makes the problem of weight and weight gain worse.
When a person goes on a crash diet (a diet that requires the dieter to take in less than 1000 calories per day) this is seen as a threat to the body and in response to the threat, it slows down the rate of metabolism by as much as 45%. As Dr. Marks from Cambridge University tells us, when weight falls metabolic rates fall as well.
This is only good for short term weight loss. However, once the person goes back to eating as they always did the weight goes right back on and the dieter is back at the starting line. This is called the rebound effect and is directly related to higher death rates. Looking back to the study, the dieter on the Cambridge Diet is quoted as saying “The first three days were torturous but from there it got worse.” She further stated that the loss of weight came slow and when she resumed her normal eating the weight came back almost immediately. In a period of one month, this dieter lost 10 lbs and gained back 5 lbs in the and.
So, in all she lost only 5 lbs in such a way that was horrible for her mind and body when she could have done the same thing with another, healthier diet. The dieter using the other method of weight loss was quoted as saying “One of the hardest- but best – things about it was the insistence on giving up coffee and stimulants.” Apparently, cutting out these things made her feel better and healthier. Looking at the bottom line, it is clear that low-cal diets do little in the way of helping in losing and keeping off weight and are dangerous and unhealthy. All they do is leave you hungry and unhappy