Weight Loss & Diet Tips - Can You Target Weight Loss?
What does targeted weight loss and balding have in common? Both have tons of products and gadgets available that are designed to solve a problem that can't be solved. Many consumers become confused by the difference between hope and reality. Hope is sold using sculptured fitness models to make you think you'll look like them if you use those products. The reality is, if it were true, everybody would look like a personal trainer or a runway model.
If you're frustrated over yet another disappointing experience with trying to blow-torch fat in specific areas using a diet or fancy equipment for targeted weight loss, here are the facts. Every study ever done on the subject of targeted weight loss has proven the same thing; it can't be done. That's because Mother Nature controls the strings that dictate where your fat losses will come from, not a diet, your exercise routine or your equipment.
A few of the factors associated with weight loss are genetics, age and gender. If you're prone to put on extra weight in your midsection, that's the first place you'll lose it and probably where you can lose the most. Your body doesn't care that you just dropped 120 bucks on some ab-machine or thigh crusher. When it comes to weight-loss, your body looseth where it chooseth.
But fear not; the formula to losing weight is simple. Create a calorie debt. Just burn more calories than you consume. That's it… That's the silver bullet plain and simple.
In general, diets don't work for most people and here are 3 quick reasons why. First, dieting kicks in two billion years of evolution and encourages the storage of fat, having exactly the opposite effect you want. Second, once the desired weight loss is achieved (assuming you stuck to the diet) and normal eating is resumed, your metabolism which was slowed by dieting, goes into overdrive. This post-diet metabolism adjustment tends to pile on more pounds not less. This is known as the "yo-yo" effect. Thirdly, nothing can make a person more obsessed with food and eating than a diet. Almost every waking moment is consumed with the visions of foods that you cannot eat.
Am I against weight loss? …absolutely not. In reality, obesity is a growing health problem in America among adults and children. I'm against so called "diet plans" and equipment designed for targeted weight loss.
In Part 2 of this article, I'm going to make the case for short, intense anaerobic and strength training workouts instead of a diet for weight loss, building muscle, burning off fat and keeping it off.
By: Rick Contrata
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