Principles of Diet and Weight Loss

“Diet” is a word that invokes a variety of emotions from a variety of people. Some people see the word as a set of rules to be followed when you need to lose weight, yet others see it as a general eating habit. Here we will look at “diet” as a little of both.
People generally diet for one of a couple of reasons, they either want to lose weight (slim down) or they have a health issue that requires better eating habits.
When you diet to lose weight, you need to ask yourself one key question, “Am I losing weight to weigh less or to slim down?” This question is so important it determines how you will approach your diet. I’ve seen way too much dependency on the bathroom scale from dieters and not enough on how well their clothes fit or how they are toning up. This can lead to multiple problems; the biggest of which is you could lose as much muscle as fat. If the purpose of your diet is to slim down and look better then judging your success solely by the bathroom scale will only prove a hindrance to your ultimate goal.
I have a large problem with a lot of the mainstream diets out there in they although they help you lose weight, they are often fairly unhealthy and do nothing to help you keep the weight off once it's lost. When a diet prevents you from eating a wide range of foods or forces you to eat a very low amount of calories you will have a much larger chance of failure. You should avoid any of these extreme diets at all costs, both for your health and your long-term weight loss goals.
What is Weight Loss?
L et’s cover briefly how weight is lost, and by weight I’m talking about fat, not water weight (which is all too common). Fat is just excess energy stored for later use, so to lose weight basically all you have to do is provide your body with less energy than it wants. So, by depriving your body of calories (the energy that it uses to run) you will force it to pull energy from other sources, including fat and muscle. This is where a bit of exercise comes into play. Yes, you can lose weight without any real activity however you will be more likely to lose more of the weight from muscle loss, this is a poor quality weight loss, it won’t help your toning, and in the end will only slow your progress.
So, keeping all the muscle that you currently have, or even adding some will greatly assist you in your weight loss endeavors. Unlike fat, your body needs to burn calories to keep muscle around, so, by adding some muscle through light resistance training, you will be upping the amount of calories your body needs to burn every day just to stay going. So, by not exercising, your body will think that it doesn't need all the muscle you have, thus burning it for energy, and when that happens you will use less energy just to stay alive, thus making it even harder to continue losing weight.
This brings me to my next topic: exercise. As much as most of us hate to do it, exercise is incredibly important in high quality weight loss (the loss of body fat as opposed to muscle or just water). However that doesn’t mean you have to go join the local gym and pump iron for 2 hours a day or train to run a marathon, it just means you need to work that muscle a bit so your body keeps it around. There are many different exercises you can do at home that don’t require any additional equipment nor do they demand too much of your time, but will still get the job done. But the best exercise will always be finding something that you enjoy doing, such as swimming, kickboxing, aerobic dancing etc… And remember, finding a partner will help with motivation and boosting the fun factor of it all. So, remember, what you eat is very important in losing weight, but exercise is just as critical. Find a partner, find a sport or other activity that you enjoy, do anything, just as long as it's active. I promise that you will succeed where others so often fail.

Article Source: http://www.articleopus.com

Eric Schmidt, author of many articles helping people to lose weight, also writes for The UnDiet Plan.com website.

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