Tuesday 9 April 2013

Calories and Weight Loss

Here's what you need to know about calories and weight-loss if you want to lose pounds and keep it off.

A calorie is a unit of energy. Specifically, a calorie is the amount of energy it takes to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water one degree centigrade.

The word calorie is used interchangeably to describe the amount of energy in food and the amount of energy saved in the system as adipose tissue (body fat). For example, a glazed doughnut contains about 210 calories and a 25 minute jog on the treadmill burns off about 210 calories.

When it comes to calories and weight-loss, if you burn more calories than you consume, your system will tap into the saved fat for energy to make up for the calorie deficit and you'll lose weight. If you consume more calories than you burn, your system will store the surplus calories as  extra fat and you'll gain weight. Some foods may get saved as extra fat more easily than others because of the way they affect your hormones or blood sugar, but too much of any food will get saved as body fat.

Since you must make a calorie deficit if you want to reduce extra fat, what's the best way to make this deficit? Should you decrease calories, increase physical activity, or do both?

The best way to make a calorie deficit is to combine a fat loss diet plan with a fat loss workout schedule.

A fat loss diet strategy is based on cutting back on calories, not on drastically reducing them. It's also based on you as an individual - your body type, your metabolic rate, and what mix of protein, carbohydrate and fat works best for you. A fat loss diet plan is not a temporary way of eating like a diet is, it's a healthy way of eating that can be followed for a lifetime.

A fat loss workout schedule that includes fitness and strength training enables you to reduce extra fat without losing muscular and without slowing down your metabolic rate. There are also plenty of health and fitness benefits associated with fitness and weight training.

Even though combining a fat loss diet plan with a fat loss workout schedule is the best way to make a calorie deficit and lose extra fat, many people make the mistake of doing just the opposite - they go on a very low-calorie diet plan and do little or no work out.

A very low-calorie diet plan can produce quick fat loss, but what happens once the diet plan ends? Most people go back to the same old way of eating that caused them to be overweight in the first place and end up gaining back any lost pounds. The reality is that very low-calorie diets almost never result in permanent weight-loss.

Another major problem that very low calories diets have is that they cause you to loss muscle mass. When you drastically reduce calories in order to starve away extra fat, you also starve away muscle mass. Lean muscle mass  is metabolically active tissue, so when you lose lean muscles your metabolic rate slows down. The slower your metabolic rate, the easier it is to gain weight and the harder it is to lose it.

The bottom line when it comes to calories and weight-loss is that there's no better way to make a calorie deficit and reduce extra fat than by combining a fat loss diet strategy with a fat loss workout schedule. When you combine a fat loss diet plan strategy with a fat loss workout schedule, the result will be not just a leaner body, but a fitter, healthier body.


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