How To NOT Gain Weight.
In the world of weight loss
the focus is almost always on ‘how to lose weight’ rather than
‘how to not gain weight’. Well, it isn’t called
the weight
loss industry for
nothing! That notwithstanding, a growing body of fitness
industry professionals believe that a better idea is for people
to concentrate on replacing their fat with muscle, even if
these means that they maintain their body weight at about the
same level. They believe that this is a much better goal than
simply losing weight.
Begin Here To Learn How To Not Gain
Weight
Some
triggers for putting weight on
Throughout our
lives there are different times when gaining weight is almost
unavoidable – or so we think. Puberty, pregnancy, and menopause
are three of the "life" stages, but also stress and emotional
discord are other times when we use food as a means of
comfort.
If you already
have a good, healthy eating style, then there is no reason why
you should gain the weight during these times as all it will
take is awareness and a few tweaks of your eating habits. On
the other hand, if you know you are about to step into one of
these "triggers", then get yourself on a good healthy eating
plan now – not necessarily to lose weight but to not gain
weight.
But hold on…if
you’re overweight at present, what could ever be wrong with
losing weight?
Depending
on how you are losing weight – it can be a bad
thing
To understand
why losing weight can be a bad thing, it’s necessary to
understand something about how the human body works and what
role fat and muscle tissue play.
First of all,
it’s important to understand that the human body is designed
for survival rather than looking good! In the past, food was
not nearly as plentiful as it is today, and this shaped how our
body reacts to what and how much we eat.
Basically,
your body views fat as an essential store of energy that helps
you to survive lean times – times when food is not plentiful.
Muscle, on the other hand, is an expensive luxury that you can
afford to lose, and may even need to lose, in lean times. This is because
muscle tissue takes more calories to maintain than fat. The
upshot of this is that your body is good at gaining fat when
you eat a lot, and good also at losing muscle when you don’t
eat so much.
This has big
implications for dieting. When you chose to go on a fad diet,
the chances are that you will lose the "weight" according to
the scales, but will you actually lose the fat? When you go
from your regular diet to a calorie-restricted one,
particularly if you eat only at mealtimes and don’t snack, your
body interprets this as a signal that food is scarce, slows
your metabolism, and starts to shed muscle tissue – and starts
to store the fat. If you do want to lose weight – then do it
properly and
Choose A Healthy
Alternative Today
This means that just ‘losing weight’ is a pretty bad goal,
because it could be (and almost certainly is) muscle rather
than fat that you’re losing. Muscle is exactly what you don’t
want to lose; not only does muscle make you look good (yes,
that goes for men AND for women), but it also helps you to burn
calories because it takes more calories to maintain than fat
tissue.
The
alternative
How to not
gain weight but swap fat for muscle is this: reduce your
calorie intake, but not drastically. Eat small, regular meals –
no more than three hours apart. Healthy snacks are ok. Ensure
that you’re getting enough protein in your diet by eating some
protein at every meal. And incorporate weight training into
your exercise program.
A regime like
this will tell your body that it’s going to need more muscle,
without triggering the ‘famine’ response. Following this
strategy will lead to a muscular body that’s a healthy body and
looks great… whatever it weighs!
Choose
Today To Not Gain
Weight
(Note: The
above links on this page are sponsored
advertisements for a dietry program. The owner of
this website is not a bona fide user of the program being
recommended)
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