Sunday, September 13, 2009

Crash Diet Retards

This article about a UK diet plan by LighterLife makes me shake my head and wonder at these people. The LL plan is, simply put, a starvation plan. Its 14 weeks at 530 calories a day. Shockingly, dieters report that they lose weight while starving their bodies of the basic nutrition it needs! And of course after losing all that weight many gain it all back and then some.

The story goes on to describe how some of the dieters end up dead or with numerous health problems, including one lady who lost so much weight that the fat deposits behind her eyes that support the eye muscle were depleted resulting in her inability to see straight and then she had to have her gall bladder removed. And what does she do? She goes on the diet again! Making her problems even worse! If this is not the definition of a retard I don't know what is?

The body needs somewhere between 1200-1500 calories just for an average sized person to lie in bed all day! That's basic maintenance on muscle, organs, brain and even fat that is used up regardless of whether or not you actually move your body around at all. And then on top of that the very food you eat requires calories to process it and turn it into something your body can use. Oh, and if you don't get sufficient calories, especially over a long time period, you send your metabolism into starvation mode and it will do everything it can to pack on weight so that it has stores should you ever again be in a starvation situation aka LighterLife diet.

Want to lose weight?
Eat sensible. Cut out the crap foods like soda, chips, ice-cream, burgers, fries and the megabucks coffees. Replace that with fresh fruits and veggies. Then go get a good nights sleep (7+hours) and do some physical exercise. I recommend starting off with pushups, pull-ups and squats. Oh, and its the weight bearing (aka muscle building) exercises that will burn fat. Cardio is good, but there is a reason for the saying "fat girls do cardio, models lift weights." After all, its muscle that burns fat, even when you are resting. If you build ten pounds of muscle (which is easier than it sounds[for the first ten anyways]) it will burn thru a pound almost every week just in daily maintenance. Transformetrics is a good place to learn simple, effective and low-cost muscle building exercises. I recommend them.