Dieting Will Make You Fat

Dieting can make you fat. We are getting fatter and it is not just our unhealthful food but the way we diet that makes us fat.

If you have never dieted and want to lose weight then stay away from any starvation diet. Just tweak your existing diet instead. Avoid sugar, white flour and high fat foods. Replace these items with healthy fruits and vegetables. Never eat anything between meals. Never go hungry except between meals. (The occasional fast is ok if it isn't over 10 days) Get some exercise most every day.

Follow these instructions and your weight will slowly drop and stabilize near the idea weight for you.

However if like most of us you have already ruined your metabolism with a starvation diet read the stories below to find out what went wrong and suggestions on how to reverse the problem.

(My wife, Susan wrote this article)

At the age of 15 I attended boarding school. During the first couple of months I lost about 10 pounds. Coming home for the first home leave my family congratulated me on how I looked. I was thrilled that I lost this weight without even trying. Being at the boarding school naturally tweaked my diet. I had three delicious meals a day but did not eat between meals and got more exercise.

Photo - I am on the left. Taken during my starvation dieting days. - On the right – My future sister-in-law.

However I wished someone had told me what I know now. I would have left my diet alone and maybe only tweaked it some get to my normal weight. Instead I was so pleased to have lost weight that I decided to lose more by dieting. My diet plan was to skip all the suppers and two lunches each week. The two lunches I skipped was replaced with fruit. This diet really worked. My weight dropped another 25 pounds to the point where I was skinny. Again I was thrilled with all the complements. I was able to continue doing this for two years.

Unfortunately it is really hard to stay on a starvation diet. I felt hungry most of the time and was always thinking about food. Toward the end of my senior year I started to slip. My weight was still good when I graduated but after going to college I really couldn't continue to starve as my friends were bringing goodies into our room and there was some excellent eating places on the campus.

I stopped starving and began to eat three meals a day. I didn't eat much junk food and exercised so assumed I would go back to what I weighted before I went to boarding school. Wrong! Because I had starved during my high school days my metabolism had slowed down and going back to normal eating put me in the obese category in just a few short months. I gained 70 pounds above my pre diet weight.

My friends and family were shocked to see my weight go up so fast and I defended myself by telling everyone I was eating normally and not eating a lot of junk food.

I didn't know why my weight jumped up but now I do.

Any starvation diet will cause the body to defend itself by lowering the metabolism. Going back to normal eating after a harsh starvation type of diet and will cause your body to gain a lot of weight. Keep doing this yo yo dieting and your weight will continue to climb.

Now the average temperature of my body it is usually well below normal, which shows a slow metabolism rate. My husband's average temperature is well above normal. He has never dieted and can lose any weight gain by tweaking his diet and cutting out junk. He is naturally thin.

One night my husband and I were watching a show about a celebrity who made his living from doing public stunts. His latest stunt was living in a giant fish bowl in some public place like a mall. The giant bowl was filled with water and he was trying to live underwater for a month or more. The public would flock to see him and the businesses around him would do really well so they paid him to do this.

The program continued and reported about some of his previous stunts. One of them was staying on top of a pole for 40 days without eating. He just drank water. The stunt went well and afterwards the celebrity went back to his normal eating. You can guess what happened. He was shown on the program with the fat hanging from his sides and he had to hire a special diet trainer to help him remove the extra fat. Now he has to be careful how he eats.

This is another example of a starvation diet causing the metabolism to slow down.

Another day I read a story about a diet coach whose students complained that she didn't know how it felt to diet. The diet coach had always kept her weigh in the normal range by exercise and tweaking her diet. She had never experienced going hungry as she taught her students to do.

Convinced by her students the diet coach decided it was a good idea to experience their pain. Wrong decision! As you can guess her metabolism was slowed and now she had to diet in order to keep to her previous weight.

Is there a way to get your metabolism back to normal? The first thing to do is stop the dieting! Second, start a sensible way of eating that you will keep all your life. Don't starve except between meals and have a treat once in a while (maybe once a week) to keep from feeling deprived. (The occasional fast is ok if it isn't over 10 days)

Here are the basic instructions to tweak your existing diet.

Avoid sugar, white flour and high fat foods.

Replace these items with healthy fruits and vegetables. (See healthy and tasty recipe books below)

Never eat anything between meals.

Never starve, a little healthy hunger between meals is ok.

Get some exercise most every day. If you don't have the time, climb stairs, park far away from the door to the store, walk as much as you can.

According to the experts this is the only way to lose weight safely and they are right but what if you still are fat and your metabolism is still slow? Can you get your Metabolism rate back to normal? It seems you should be able too.

One thought is that you can do the reverse to a starving diet. Instead of starving eat a whole lot for 40 days and your metabolism might go up. Unfortunately it doesn't happen that way. If this were true your weight would eventually go back down as your metabolism rate adjusts to normal eating. If you overeat for 40 days you will probably just get fatter.

Switching to a healthy way of eating may get your weight back to normal by itself but if it does not try the program below. But first remember that our bodies need time to adjust to a healthy diet before trying anything extreme so give it several months before trying the experimental program below.

Metabolism can be raised by exercise. But if you starve and exercise the metabolism probably won't rise.

The best solution that came to me would be a 40-day extreme exercise and increased calorie program. After 40 days stop the extreme exercise and extra calories and go back to normal eating. This has not been tested yet but it could raise your metabolism rate . It is worth a try if healthy eating and regular exercise doesn't cause you to lose weight.

I have not personally tested this yet because I just thought of this possible solution just today as I write up this article. Even though I work from home my schedule is really busy. I will have to put some thought on how to test this. However if you can, test this program yourself and see if it works. Then come back and report your results in the Guestbook on the bottom of this page. Remember to stabilize your normal diet with the above instructions first for a few months. You may lose weight without the extreme program. If your weight goes down slowly do not try to hurry it along.

Remember to always check with your doctor before starting any exercise program. If you are right on the verge of a heart attach or stroke the extreme exercise could push you over the edge.

An example of extreme exercise would be biking 20 miles to and from work, then continue to get exercise throughout the day by climbing stairs or whatever you can find to get moving. Once you are home go on a jog or good walk in the evening. Other types of exercise could be swimming, hiking and more. Whatever you do, do a lot of it. If you don't have enough exercise your increased caloric intake will just make you fatter and not increase your metabolism at all.

During the 40 days of extreme exercise avoid junk food and increase your calorie intake with wholesome foods like 100 percent whole wheat bread sandwiches with a garden burger, tomato, spinach and avocado. Sounds healthy and tasty. Also eat the good foods found in the recipe books below.

After 40 days stop the extra eating and exercise and go back to a normal and healthy diet and exercise. t takes about three weeks to form a habit so there may be a little hunger when you go back to your normal eating. You should adjust fairly quickly.

Here are two examples that suggest that the theory on increasing metabolism by eating more and exercise could be correct.

One is a recent article where the metabolism of tribesman in (I think) in Africa was studied. The Herdsman were spending their whole day following after their herds and getting a lot of exercise. The researchers found out that their metabolism wasn't any higher then the average office worker here in the United States and their calorie intake was really small. This suggests to me that their body metabolism slowed down to adjust to the small amount of calories they took in each day.

The next example is the Olympic swimming champion Michael Phelps. He worked out for hours and consumed 12,000 calories each day. A regular person eating this many calories would blow up like a balloon. But Michael must have an extremely high metabolism to keep up with his high food intake. It probably isn't because he is superhuman but because his excess exercise with the extra calories caused his body to adjust by raising his metabolism.

Below are some cookbooks that will give you some excellent recipes for a healthy diet. Follow them carefully and not only will you lose weight naturally but will improve your health and avoid heart attack, stroke and diabetes.