“Why do diets never seem to work long term?” How to help you start a diet and stick with it (along with a great website to help you stay on track), by Encore PT, Josh Davis.

“The Secret to Weight Loss… SHHHH!!!

After much research the secret to weight loss turns out to be… drum roll please… burn more calories than you consume!!  That’s right folks, Scientists and Biologist have finally figured it out!!

The truth of the matter is this… All the diets in the world are in some way geared around this one concept (calorie input vs. calorie output).  It’s really not rocket science. It’s just an understanding of how the body gains and loses weight.

If you put more calories in than you burn you WILL gain weight… GARAUNTEED! The good news is that works in reverse!  If you burn more calories that you consume you will, you WILL, YOU WILL lose weight!!

Now, we all know how to put calories in, but how does our body burn them? Your body uses calories for all functions (i.e. walking, lifting, talking, digesting food, breathing, pumping your heart, and yes even eating).  The point is that if all you do is sit in your favorite chair and never get up, your body still burns calories. The bigger you are, the more calories you burn even doing nothing at all!!

SO, Have you ever started a diet and got great results for a while and then all the sudden you couldn’t lose anymore weight even though you are still doing the same thing.  Let me guess, you got frustrated and gave up, and your excuse for still being overweight is that you tried dieting and you just couldn’t lose anymore weight. WRONG!!!  The reason you stopped losing weight is BECAUSE you never changed what you were doing.

Because of the concept that I mentioned earlier, as you lose weight you body does not require as many calories to keep you alive (i.e. breathing, pumping your heart etc.), therefore, if you keep the same calorie in/calorie out ratio your body will reach an equilibrium and you will quit losing weight.  At this time, you have to do one of three things.  You have to decrease calorie input, increase calorie output, or both. In other words eat less, exercise more, or both. At this point, you will start to lose weight again.  All you have to do is repeat this process until you are at your desired weight.

Now, the other factor to this is that if you never exercise you will lose muscle strength and tone, therefore, the less you do the less you will be able to do and the more susceptible you will be to injury and disease.  In other words, this is NOT giving you permission to be lazy and not exercise.  There are a lot of benefits to exercise beyond just weight loss (i.e. heart health).  My point is, you CAN lose weight without exercise although it is not recommended.  The best way to lose weight is a combination of diet and exercise.

So, how do I get started? Well, I’m glad you asked!

Start by logging what you eat and calculating how many calories it is.  There are many apps and websites to help you with this.  My personal favorite is www.myfitnesspal.com. On that website/app you can simply type in what you eat and it will tell you how many calories is in it.

The next step is BE HONEST!!! If you lie about what you are taking in, you are only hurting yourself.

Next, start small!! I cannot stress this enough! Weight loss is not supposed to be a quick thing.  You didn’t get all that extra weight in one month and you shouldn’t try to lose it in one month either.  You can diet quickly but you are essentially starving yourself and your body will not tolerate this for long.  You won’t persevere no matter how bad you want to and your body will crave food so bad that you eventually binge eat and gain all the weight back plus some.  Start by dropping 100-200 calories out of your diet and adding some exercise to burn 100-200 calories per day.  Do that for a while until you weight loss plateaus the repeat process.  Do this until you are at your desired weight.

WARNING:  Never go below about a 1200 calorie per day diet.  This is a good healthy diet and if you think you are eating less than 1200 calories per day and you are overweight and not losing weight you are lying to yourself.

There is a way to eat healthy and it is extremely important, but this post is simply discussing weight loss in general, not healthy eating habits.

Good luck in all your endeavors and I hope this helps you finally get rid of what’s been “weighing you down”.”