Calorie Shifting Diet - Is it the Latest Fad Diet?

Calorie Shifting Diet - Is it the Latest Fad Diet?

Calorie shifting, also known as calorie cycling, is it the latest among fad diets? It is rapidly increasing in popularity and there are not many scientists questioning it. But what is the calorie shifting diet? Is this diet really brand new or has it been around for ages? (I guess you know my answer to that).

What is the basics of this diet? We all know that in the good old days (millenniums ago) people often starved during dry seasons or whatever. People with a high metabolism had little chance of surviving these periods. Why? They lacked the ability to store fat for later usage. However, the people that had this ability survived the starvation period because their metabolism decreased to a minimum, using only exactly what the body needed. So they survived for a long period of time eating only 500 calories a day. This meant survival of the fittest (evolution according to Darwin), but as the world is today this heritage means death of the fattest.

Our body is slow at adjusting the basal functions, such as just metabolism.

So, what does this tell us about low calorie diets? Well, if you are really disciplined and persistent you will lose weight, but you'll have to go through a lot of pain and torment yourself. Meeting a person that is eating 500 calories a day makes me scared, they are angry and hungry and you are afraid of being eaten by them. Uhm, maybe not, but you get the picture.

We were supposed to talk about the calorie shifting diet, so back on track. Our metabolism is complex and it is working to what it think is in favor for your body. This means preparation for a starvation period. The metabolism calculates a mean of the last 2-4 days and it presume that you will eat pretty much the same foods the next coming days. This gives us our window of opportunity to manipulate it (the metabolism). If we ate a certain way the latest days, a way that increased the metabolism, we could keep this higher rate by fooling our body.

How?

We shift the type of calories, hence the name calorie shifting. The metabolism doesn't know what to expect so it will keep on burning fat for fuel. The uniqueness of this diet is that you lose fat fast, most other fast weight loss diets makes you lose water and muscle and, in fact, as you lose your lean muscle mass you also decrease your ability to burn fat.

I always recommend that you start exercising when you are on a diet, and although calorie shifting works without exercising, it works way better with exercise. As I wrote above, if you decrease your muscle mass so will the ability to burn fat. Why is that? Well, muscles, liver and brain are the main users of energy in our body. You are not likely to increase the size of your brain so it will use about a quarter pound of carbohydrates to work well. Oh yes, the brain wants glucose for fuel and it will only use fat if there are no glucose around. However, it will not run as smoothly on fat. That is a major setback with the Atkins diet. You wouldn't pour low grade petrol in your high-performance vehicle, would you?

The liver is a fantastic organ when it comes to burning fat. It actually can burn fat for nothing...yes, nothing at all. Certain diets target this ability well and the calorie shifting diet is no exception.

We want to lose fat! We target the metabolism and the liver for this, we want our muscles to stay and our fat to decrease.

In a lot of fast weight loss schemes you lose water weight, but not with the calorie shifting diet, you may lose some water due to the stabilized insulin level, but that is just healthy and you get the right amount of water in your body.

Jennifer Olsen was a master of failing at different diets. She understood that there were more to losing weight then just going on a diet. Today she has lost nearly 50 pounds with the calorie shifting diet and meanwhile she has finished reading 'Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle' and she is implementing what she learned into daily activities.

She made a mini-site that gives examples of diets, complete fast weight loss diets, samples of calorie shifting diets and reviews of books that helped her stop living the unhealthy life and turning around into a more healthy life-style.

Posted in: HEATHLY EATING, WEIGHT LOSS ADVICES