Does Calorie Counting Work?

By Carrie Spry

Are the enemy Calories? The answer is No. Eating fewer calories will not result in weight loss. For example, if you are currently eating 2500 calories per day and drop to 1500 calories, you necessarily lose weight. If you cut your calories so drastically, you will reach a dieting plateau (you will reach a point where you will no longer lose weight.)

How does a person typically begin a diet? Well, one day you look in the mirror and are disappointed with what you see. Your clothes are getting tighter and tighter. It's just so frustrating. You put in a bit of an effort each day to no avail. There are people out there who eat the same, yet they don't gain the weight. Do these affirmations sound familiar? On this day you are particularly frustrated and get angry enough that you decide to go on a diet.

Today is the day of new beginnings. You start by skipping breakfast and decide that you will have an early lunch, or brunch as they call it. Kill two birds with one stone. When it gets close to your next meal, all you can think about is food. You begin to get a little shaky as your body is not used to going this long without food.

You feel miserable, but you bravely tell yourself that you can do this. You don't want to quit, and you want to actually lose weight this time. You still have enough motivation that at lunch you decide to have something small as you are still convinced that eating less is the key to losing weight.

By dinner time, you're tired, hungry and you have a headache. You start to think, "Do you really want to go through this everyday? Can You?" Today, you are still so determined to lose weight that you decide to stick to it.

If you are really brave, you may have held off for a week, but chances are you have gone back to eating the same way after only a few days. Even if you were able to stick with it for a few days or weeks, you will not have lost any weight. Well, any weight worth losing. You may have made matters worse though. Since your body now thinks it is starving, it will begin to store every calorie that you eat.

Although you may have lost a few pounds it was likely just water weight, not real fat loss. And once you begin to eat normally, the water will just be gained back again.

This is why if you keep trying to starve yourself, you will never lose weight. Starving yourself is not the answer. If you are serious about weight loss, you need to start giving your body the right types of calories in the right doses on the right days. - 30289

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