Shifting Calories Diet
Nearly any diet that puts your body in a caloric deficit will work in the short term--this is why you can easily lose weight for at least a few weeks by following almost any fad diet found on the Internet. However, the longer you diet the more resistant your body becomes to losing additional weight. Thus, finding a diet that will continue to provide results across a longer timespan can be a real challenge--this is where employment of a calorie shifting diet can come into play.
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Diet and Metabolism
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Remember that your body's number one goal is survival--not to look good in a bathing suit. Thus, your body has automatic defense mechanisms against starvation. Where food intake is decreased for an excessive period of time, your body will downregulate its vital processes to attempt to match caloric expenditure with intake. This is why you will initially lose weight eating "x" number of calories per day, but your weight loss will eventually taper off, and your body will become more and more resistant to losing additional mass.
Calorie Shifting Diet Concept
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The idea behind a calorie shifting diet is to fool the body into refraining from altering its metabolic set point for as long as possible. This is done by placing the body in a caloric deficit for a majority of the days of the week (traditional dieting), coupled with two or three days of additional food consumption. These higher calorie days "convince" the body that it is not starving, so it will continue shedding weight on demand.
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Sample Calorie Shifting Diet
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A basic calorie shifting diet could consist of eating 1,800 calories during the week and altering that figure to 2,300 to 2,500 calories on the weekend. Assuming your food choices are sound, you will not regain any significant amount of weight over the weekend, but you will prevent your body from downregulating metabolism to match your 1,800 calorie dieting intake.
Benefits and Drawbacks
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The primary drawback of a calorie shifting diet is that you will not lose weight as quickly as you could if you ate at the lower limit of caloric intake consistently throughout the week. However, you will make up this lost opportunity for fat loss in the long-term, as the calorie shifting diet will remain effective far past the point where a conventional diet ceased yielding gains.
Considerations
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No matter how ideal the theory behind any diet, your overall results will be dictated by your food selections while on the diet. Wholly eliminate consumption of fried and processed foods from your diet, along with anything that contains refined flour. Eat a diet consisting of only lean meats, fruits, vegetables and healthy fats (e.g. almonds, walnuts, avocados, olive oil). Whether you are on a diet or eating to maintain your weight, consumption of natural foods can ensure that your body composition throughout the process is ideal.
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