A new concept in dieting called “calorie shifting” is causing quite a stir in among the health conscious. And although more and more of us have heard of us, few are quite aware of why this principle works. To understand why, we need to understand something about traditional dieting - and why it so often fails.
The principle behind traditional dieting is simply to “starve” the body. That is, if you eat less, you should lose weight. Sounds simple enough, but the truth is that traditional dieting usually does not take off pounds, and in fact, it can cause weight gain.
As you lower your daily intake of food, your body undergoes a series of hormonal and metabolic changes associated with starvation. It tries to store as much food as possible in a quick and easy way, resulting in more fat buildup. At the same time, it begins to break down muscle tissues for energy.
The end result is a sudden loss of water to flush poisonous byproducts out of your system; this appears on the outside as sudden weight loss. But this weight loss isn’t permanent; if you start eating normally again, you will regain that water weight as well as adding more in the form of fat while losing overall muscle mass.
On the other hand, the shifting calories diet works quite differently than the traditional ’starvation’ diet. It caters to the principle of having the type and amount of caloric intake modified from time to time, without sacrificing proper nutritional requirements to prevent the harmful effect of muscle breakdown.
What this means on a practical level is that instead of eating three meals a day, you eat four or five smaller ones daily. Each meal varies greatly with the types of food it offers and the amounts. In this way, you allow your body to burn fat and yet maintain a healthy food intake each day. During these mini-meals, you eat all you want, yet never allow yourself to feel “full.” This is important in making calorie shifting work.
As with most healthy diets, the shifting calories diet approach will benefit from having an overall healthy lifestyle, with moderate amounts of exercise. There is no reason to go overboard with it, especially at first. Even a short walk every day can work wonders combined with the shifting calories diet approach.
Traditional starvation dieting just doesn’t work. Worse, it can cause more harm than good, and is most definitely NOT good for your body. By using the shifting calories diet, you can burn off that excess fat (not muscle) and keep eating the things you normally would in plentiful amounts.