Weight Loss Plans

 Weight Loss Plans

The preoccupation with weight and physical perception of one’s body has become a topic widely discussed, not only in the largely overweight United States but throughout the world. Perhaps no other topic exceeds the level of discussion, scientific investigation, or time, energy, and expense as does dieting and weight loss.

Here are four diet concepts to help you determine if they make sense for you, your body type, and your lifestyle.

Calorie Shifting Diet

A calorie-shifting diet is essentially a plan designed to fool your body. There are intricate systems within your body connecting the vital organs to each other for help with food metabolism. Because the body is hardwired to survive it determines its energy usage based on those survival parameters. Because this fact is unchanging, it allows you to use your good planning to fool your body into losing weight.

With calorie shifting you don’t have to worry about starving yourself to lose weight, or eating one type of food: good preparation and planning will allow you to eat a normal diet, with a few minor tweaks to the calorie totals to achieve success.

If for instance, you are on a reduced-calorie diet, eventually your body will change its metabolic function and you will hit a weight loss plateau. Because it changes your intake of calories often, a calorie-shifting diet interferes with the body’s interpretation and can yield great results for the long term.

To use a calorie-shifting diet you will select a specific number of calories that will lower your weight, for instance, a person might start with 2,000 calories daily. Eating this number of calories daily for 1 month will set the body’s expectations. After that, you can begin to trick the body: for 1 week, increase your caloric intake by 300 calories twice during the week.

For example: on Monday and Thursday eat 2,300 calories. The next week subtract 500 calories on two days, Wednesday and Saturday for example. The next week return to the 2,000 calorie baseline. The next week add 400 calories two days a week.

Your body isn’t easily fooled so you will want to stay on your toes to keep it guessing. The variation in calories will do the work for you, and burn additional calories, keeping you happy healthy, and progressing towards your weight loss goals.

Intermittent Fasting

Intermittent fasting for weight loss or weight stabilization has been known and practiced since ancient times. Buddha himself even recommended eating before noon and having nothing but fluids afterward. Today, there are many ways to interpret the wisdom of Intermittent Fasting.

In its most common form, intermittent fasting refers to a discipline of alternating fasting which usually does not exclude water, with a normal diet every other day. This creates a cycle of 48 hours, half normal diet and half fast. There are proponents of Intermittent Fasting that recommend variations of the cycle period. A popular book titled with the suggested time frame is “Fast 5”. This regimen suggests a “19/5” split, 19 hours daily fast followed by 5 hours of eating. Another similar and widely accepted regimen would be “20/4”, just slightly different.

So many studies and personal experiences have been documented that show the benefits of this type of diet plan. Of note, lower glucose levels, blood pressures, and rates of chronic diseases like diabetes, hypertension, and cancer, have been seen with this lifestyle. These benefits obviously help to improve lifestyle and health. Because this method has been used for many hundreds of years and doesn’t cause damage in any way, it is considered a safe diet. It can provide a sense of immediate accomplishment and give you a good balance in your life.

The Energy Balance Diet

This diet is also based on the premise that the automatic responses of the body can be manipulated to create leveraged weight loss results. The key to losing weight on any diet is understanding both its immediate and future effects on the body.

Joshua Rosenthal, a Doctor of Education and director of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition wrote a book specifically about the energy-balanced diet. The book is worth reading if for nothing else but the science behind the process. It talks about how food works within your system and how to choose foods that help you. For instance, consuming simple sugars stimulate a burst of insulin which then metabolizes the available sugars; the unused insulin creates hunger perpetuating the cycle. The goal is to understand the best forms of fuel for your body.

This diet’s success is dependent on having insights into foods that have more sustained energy released in the breaking down process, and those that require energy to metabolize. The user of the energy balance diet will want to find the best possible fuel for the body, so the bulk of the hard work is done by the body. This diet will definitely take into account that “you are what you eat”.

Reduced Food Diet

We see advertisements for this type of diet every day with Weight watcher, Jenny Craig, Nutri-Systems, and numerous other brand names which have made their business on the science of this method. There are very sophisticated processes and systems to calculate the necessary number of calories required to obtain weight loss. The diet also requires some knowledge of “good” versus “bad” calories in food selection.

Using a calorie calculator supported by Dr. Oz (a renowned surgeon and physician, widely lauded for his investigative scientific approach to understanding daily occurrences and their effects on the human body), you can determine the number of calories it takes to adequately fuel your body in the fat and weight burning process. Many people have long-term success with these types of diets if they remain reasonably diligent on tracking and diet control.

Summary

Understanding the way your brain perceives and the way your body reacts to any diet will help you to get the best results. Every diet can have its benefits and drawbacks, but with so many different styles available, it’s easy to find one that you can use successfully. The best way to find a long-term solution for weight loss, and work on a healthier lifestyle is to find a diet plan that fits with your normal routine, and then learn the ins and outs of the diet, by trying it. Each of these diets and the many others available can give you a lot of great options to choose from.

Here’s to a healthier and happier you!