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Weight Loss: A New Lifestyle Plan
Improving an individual's metabolic control is an essential component of any diet plan. Preserving muscle mass and losing weight predominantly as body fat is the key to accomplishing this improvement in metabolic control. It is, in fact, muscle mass that dictates metabolism. Very overweight and obese individuals have extremely high body fat relative to muscle mass, which can effectively slow their metabolism as well as promote insulin resistance.
A total program, therefore, is one that would incorporate diet and exercise with supplements that will help improve metabolic control.
When choosing a weight loss plan, it's important to seek out diets that preserve muscle mass and want to do. Crash dieting and fad dieting that induce "quick" weight loss generally promotes muscle and water loss and less fat loss. This results in the "yo-yo" syndrome since when patients gain weight back they gain it as fat-not muscle. Set your mind to the diet, and you will do it. The best plan to follow is one that targets the change in body composition and preferentially enhances the lost of body fat rather than muscle mass.
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In reviewing the scientific data it is clear that a low-glycemic-index (GI) diet appears to promote weight loss more effectively than other types of diets. Those following this type of diet feel full faster, more satisfied with what they have eaten and have better glucose tolerance. Their weight loss occurs predominantly as fat. That's because low-GI diets prevent the metabolic switch from being thrown that increases fat storage rather than fat burning. It is important to realize that this type of diet is not simply a low-carbohydrate diet. Treating all carbohydrates the same still allows dieters to consume high-GI carbohydrates, which will throw the metabolic switch to store more body fat.
People who follow a low-GI diet can consume carbohydrates that do not elicit a high-GI response such as fiber, beans, lentils, oats, yams, sweet potatoes as well as a host of other foods. Even most fruits such as apples, oranges and grapefruit, all high in pectin, are low to moderate on the glycemic index, which makes them permissible on this diet plan.
Just as simply restricting carbohydrates is not an effective weight loss strategy, simply restricting calories has not resulted in the preferential change in body composition of losing body fat rather than muscle mass. Also, significantly cutting calories in an attempt to lose weight can decrease energy expenditure by 10 percent and during re-feeding by as much as 15 percent.
Our bodies don't know we are cutting calories just to lose weight-they are programmed to reduce our metabolism to adjust for food shortages that occurred during our hunter-gatherer existence. Crash dieting leads to further slowing of metabolism since most of the weight is lost as muscle and water and later gained back as body fat.
In other words, restriction of calories and/or carbohydrates per se does not ensure that high-GI foods will be eliminated from the diet. High-GI foods can cause a metabolic switch that preferentially stores protein, fat and carbohydrate rather than promoting oxidation of these nutrients. Low-GI diets also improve insulin resistance and other risk factors for coronary artery disease, such as elevated blood lipids. Unlike other diets, a low-GI plan can be followed indefinitely.
It is also important to incorporate exercise into the program to significantly improve body composition. Walking, dancing, cycling and using stepper machines are all examples of aerobic exercise. Some extremely overweight and obese people may have pain even when walking, so often water aerobics may be a better place to start. Everyone should start slowly if they are out of shape and start with five to 10 minutes three times each week building up to 30-45 minutes three to five times each week. Strength training can be added later to further preserve body composition.
Remember that muscle dictates your metabolism and high body fat slows metabolism. Preserving or even building a little more muscle can have dramatic effects on metabolism.
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How People Reduce Belly Fat?
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