diet reviews medifast

You can't walk past a bookshop or watch TV without seeing advertisements for the next big thing in weight loss, every year, summer and Christmas. 'Lose ten pounds in two weeks' and other ridiculous claims, you know those claims may well be true although probably not. However there is one big problem with crash dieting - your probably just as soon going to put the weight back on because of your slowed metabolism and even more worryingly - some more weight on top of that. This leaves you with more weight than you originally had, not quite so great now!

Here are the main problems with these diets:

- Emotionally and physically draining
- Slow your metabolism down to a crawl (more on this in a minute)
- Starve your body of much needed nutrients and macronutrients.
- Majority of the weight is 'water weight', which is where all these extremely quick weight loss claims come from.
- Rely heavily on scales - highly unreliable way of measuring your body fat. REMEMBER - you want to lose body fat right? Not weight, no one can 'see' weight.

Why they don't work? The main reason these diets won't work is once you start to eat 'normally' again, your metabolism is so slow that it will store pretty much anything you give it. Of course all of these factors combine to give you not much success at all, one fundamental problem for these diets is there very name 'diet'. For many this term simply means a change in their usual feeding habits, what you actually need is a fundamental change in the way you eat, FOREVER, not during 6 weeks as the book tells you. These diets are often very emotionally and physically draining, believe me; your body will let you know it's not getting what it needs! Thus it is very difficult to stay on these programs for the recommended duration, let alone for years afterwards.

Water, water everywhere

Here's an interesting fact for you: for every 1 gram of glycogen (carbs) stored, your body will hold onto 1 gram of water, what does this mean? Well for one if you're on a high protein, low carb diet such as the Atkins diet, all that weight loss your seeing is going down the toilet, literally. Once you start eating carbohydrates again that weight is going to return, do you think you can go your whole life not eating carbohydrates, considering how downright grouchy and sluggish you get from denying your body it's primary source of fuel?

'The secret'

Here's my big secret, multimillion dollar ideal for losing weight - your metabolism. The hard truth is fat takes a lot longer to be burned than water leaving your body, in which case you are going to need a sustained, long term program for losing weight. The key to this is your metabolism, also in regards to losing weight, try to avoid the scales, go by how you look in the mirror, how your jeans fit, and your waist size. The scales are useful when used sparingly, perhaps once per week, your bodyweight will fluctuate daily by 1-2 lbs or even more so use the scales to judge progress at predetermined intervals.

Okay, back to 'the secret', your metabolism - Wikipedia defines it as:

'Metabolism is the set of chemical reactions that occur in living organisms to maintain life. These processes allow organisms to grow and reproduce, maintain their structures, and respond to their environments. Metabolism is usually divided into two categories. Catabolism breaks down organic matter, for example to harvest energy in cellular respiration. Anabolism, uses energy to construct components of cells such as proteins and nucleic acids.'

Basically it is your body breaking down and using the energy you are providing it, even while you sit here reading this, your body is churning away like a fire burning energy to fuel all the reactions in your body, anyway, enough theory.....

How does this relate to weight loss? The higher your metabolism the more calories you are burning, right? Ever wonder why the skinny kid at school who ate chocolate every day and played play station all night was so slim? His metabolism was working at blazing speed! Yours is predetermined at birth by your genes, however it is extremely easily changed to suit you. So, back to the secret - I hope you realise that is sarcasm......

Make your metabolism work for you, not against you, the reason people put on all that weight back on when they come off the diet is that their metabolism has slowed down to a crawl, it's almost in hibernation mode. It's basically thinking if your not gonna give it any coal to burn it's gonna store anything you do for a rainy day.

Speeding up your metabolism - To speed up your metabolism you do two things:

1) Exercise more and regularly
2) Eat frequently, in smaller quantities (See, not that big a secret, huh?)

Feed your metabolism

Think of your body as a furnace that you need to keep constantly feeding fuel, don't chuck in all the logs at once, if you look after your metabolism, it will look after you and you will be losing weight sitting here reading this blog! Good for me, good for you!To work out your metabolism at rest, your basal metabolic rate (BMR) use the tools on my site and eat 500 calories below this for results. As for the best exercises to raise your metabolism, I'll be posting that up soon, have a great day.