Diets to lose weight are available in many forms: low carb, low fat, and cabbage soup to name three. There are even ice cream and cookie diets! But if you are really want diets to lose weight, here are my suggestions.
First of all, don’t fall for fad diets. Most of these diets involve you losing water weight not burning fat. Diets to lose weight and permanently keep it off require that you make lifestyle adjustments.
Your body needs a certain number of calories to keep itself going. If you get less than this amount, your body burns the fat it has. If this goes on for too long, you can do irreparable damage to your body which is the case with people who have Anorexia.
On the other hand, when you take in more calories than your body needs to function, it stores the excess as fat. People with too much body fat have health problems including heart disease and cancer.
The goal is to get to a healthy body weight and keep it there. You do this by balancing the amount of calories you take in with the amount you expend.
It takes 3500 calories to put on one pound of body fat and, conversely, burning 3500 calories will take off one pound of body fat. Therefore, if you want to lose one pound a week, you need to burn 500 calories more a day than you take in.
A 5’4 120 pound 30 year old woman needs 1250 calories to keep her body going if all she does is lay around in bed. But, if she has a moderately light activity level including some walking and housework but no formal exercise program, she should have 1870 calories a day to maintain weight. A 6’0 180 pound 30 year old man who has a physically demanding job needs around 3100 calories just to maintain his weight. For either of these people, diets to lose weight will involve cutting back on their food or increasing their physical activity.
Knowing your calorie maintenance level is useful because you can then determine how to adjust it on diets to lose weight. You want to give your body a calorie deficit to take pounds off. Again, we’re not talking about merely losing water weight we’re talking about taking inches off your belly and other body parts.
Diets to lose weight should also focus on how many calories are in foods. For instance, there are 9 calories in a gram of fat and only 4 calories in a gram of protein or carbohydrates. That’s why limiting the number of grams of fat in your diet can help you lose weight. But note that many of the “low fat” processed products in the grocery store replace the fat with a lot of sugar. Ounce for ounce, many of these products are no lower in total calories than their regular versions.
Diets to lose weight are based on calorie deficits. Burn more calories than you take in and you will have diets to lose weight.
