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Do you have an idea why fad diet spread like a “bush fire” even though 95% of dieters fail? Lat month, just in Yahoo, 1.2 million people searched for diets and weight loss. Out of them 200,000 were looking for diet and weight loss pills. Only 450,000 people searched for fitness and exercise. Out of them 50,000 were looking for fitness and exercise program and a teeny-weeny group of 5,000 people searched for a fat loss solution. Shocking figures in a world of free flow information. Weight loss, diet, and pills are still 3 times bigger than fitness and exercise. It should have been the other way around…but it isn’t! 95% of diets fail due to a combination of hormonal changes, muscle loss and flat out frustration. Hormonal Changes Your body’s natural response to shortage of calories is to conserve fat. This "starvation response" is associated to hormonal changes and makes life difficult for most dieters. Muscle Loss If a dieter persists long enough with the self-imposed starvation, the body begins to break down muscle tissue for fuel. When protein is broken down, it releases nitrogen. Your body will quickly wash away the nitrogen by releasing water from tissue cells, causing an immediate reduction in water weight and a noticeable drop on the scale. However, water and muscle loss is nothing to celebrate. The water weight will be quickly regained as soon as you have something to drink, and the missing muscle can wreak havoc on your metabolism for a good long time. Frustration Studies show that most dieters don’t keep up the starvation routine for long. They’ll eventually return to their old eating habits. When this happens, the weight is inevitably regained. The kicker is that while they lost both muscle and fat during the diet, what they put back was all fat. So, even though they may weigh the same as they did when they started, they now have a lot more fat and a lot less muscle than they did before the diet. This means that their metabolisms are slower and their calorie requirements are lower. That’s one reason dieters are prone to regaining all of the lost weight and more. The Solution Combine Healthy Diet with the Resistance Training. Your first priority to solve the diet dilemma is to add resistance exercise. Most people that add exercise to their diet take the wrong way. They perform long duration cardio exercise which may worsen the problem because they continue to lose more muscle and take their metabolism to a free-fall spiral. What is a healthy diet? A healthy diet is based around natural whole food especially fresh fruits, vegetables, legumes and lean protein. A healthy diet keeps your metabolism in high gear with 4 to 6 small meals a day. It’s flexible enough to allow some treats from time to time. No food is off-limits, but sweets and junk food are avoided at least 90% of the time. What is the Right Resistance Training? The right resistance training is the one that allows you to preserve your muscles while you are dieting and even gain some muscles which boosts your metabolism. Resistance training can be done in your home using body weight exercises or at the gym using resistance machines and free weights – better even to do them both. Effective resistance training is performing several sets each one with 6-15 repetitions till you fail to do even one more. If you can do more than 6-15, increase the resistance. Is This All? What About Cardio? You don’t need cardio training to solve the diet syndrome. Healthy diet and resistance training kick-off fat loss without losing muscle. But it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do cardio training. It will accelerate your metabolism and improve your heart’s health. Short duration high intensity cardio like intervals is proven to accelerate metabolism more effectively than long low intensity flat cardio. Kick Start Your Next Successful “Diet” Instead of periodical diets, change your lifestyle and adopt 4-6 healthy meals a day with 40 minutes of resistance training 3-4 times a week and 20 minutes of interval training 2-3 times a week. Never diet without resistance training and you will never be part of the shocking statistics. Resource: Dieting and Metabolism by Renee Cloe, ACE Certified Personal Trainer
Article Source: http://www.bodyformind.com/db
Dov Oshri is the author of the revolutionary Anti-Aging Fitness Program "Change Your Body and Be Admired". He writes for Body for Mind – a Wellness Lifestyle for Successful People where his ebook "Perpetual Wellbeing - 4 Steps to Ageless Sex-Appeal" can be downloaded for FREE.
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