Help and Advice on Losing Weight

Read How I Lost 45 Pounds with two simple steps

Are you planning to follow a low calorie diet plan in order to lose weight and that extra fat? Along with that you have probably also heard a lot about the importance of positive thinking in weight loss. If you keep harboring negative thoughts, you will never be able to lose weight. On the other hand, if you become a positive thinker, weight loss will become easy for you. So it makes sense that you keep a positive attitude while you are keeping track of your calories. But before you do that, read this article to find out why low calorie diet plans don't work.

I cannot tell you how many people have emailed me saying that they followed certain popular low calorie diet plans for a few weeks only to find out that they haven't lost much weight. As such they felt that weight loss is impossible and therefore, they quit the diet program altogether. Remember though that just as you cannot lose weight overnight, you also cannot transform your negative thoughts into positive ones within a very short time. So be patient with yourself and try to incorporate these changes slowly into your life. Along with your positive thoughts and proper tracking of your intake of food you will soon enough see a difference in your habits.

The number one reason why low-calorie diet plans don't work is: when you eat low-calorie foods, your body basically remains malnourished. You feel sick and tired at all times. Forget about exercises, you don't even have enough energy to complete even your regular activities. All these things happen because your metabolic rate is low. And this basically happens because you are starving your body into it. If you want to lose weight successfully, you need to keep these three things in mind:

1. Calories are not your enemies: Calories are not what you should avoid; calories are required to supply your body with the necessary nutrition and energy. When your body gets enough food, it'll increase your metabolic rate, which will automatically result in weight loss. The bad calories are those that are available in junk foods. So while you won't accumulate fat by eating 10 apples per day (even though a single apple contains almost 100 calories), you will surely get fat by eating 10 burgers in a single day.

That is, the basic difference! You need to avoid empty calories (that is, junk foods) and embrace negative calorie foods, such as fruits and vegetables. Now negative calorie doesn't mean that there is no calorie in these foods; it only means that in order to digest themselves, these foods will force your body to burn more calories than what they provide. This results in calorie deficit which will ultimately result in weight loss!

2. Motivation and realistic goals: Now it is time to set some realistic goals for yourself. To do that, you need to know your ideal body weight, and then subtract that from your current body weight. The resulting figure you now get is the amount of body weight you need to lose to acquire the kind of figure you want. Once you have set your goals, you now need some motivation that will help you achieve your weight loss goals. What you will use to motivate yourself will depend on the reason behind your weight loss. If you want to be like your favorite celebrity, hang the pictures of that celebrity all around your house. Side by side, also hang your picture with your current body weight! That will be more than enough to keep you motivated.

3. Muscle building is a must: Do you know that in order to maintain themselves, muscles burn a lot of your calories? This in effect means that the more lean muscles you have, the faster you will be able to lose weight. Eating protein-rich foods is a good way of building lean muscles; working out regularly in the gym is another. There is yet another advantage of eating protein-rich foods: you won't feel hungry quite as often; as such, the possibility of overeating is almost non-existent. When you eat low-calorie foods, you are not able to build muscles; instead you LOSE muscles. When your body doesn't have enough lean muscles, it is not able to burn fat since your metabolic rate remains at an abnormally low level. So that is one more reason why low calorie diets don't work!

Most of these low calorie diets will only help you lose water and muscles; while you may be misled into believing that you have actually lost several dozens of pounds, you have not lost the single most important thing that is keeping you from becoming slim: and that is FAT! Unless you lose fat, there is no way you can become fit.