Two Ways to Boost Calorie Burn
Dieting naturally lowers your metabolism in two ways.
- When you restrict calories, your body responds in order to conserve energy. This causes a drop in metabolism, or the number of calories you burn just to exist. The effects are temporary however, because successful dieting means weight loss and a permanently lower metabolism because you need less energy to support less weight. Your metabolism will lower by the same percent as the weight you’ve lost. Some find that their metabolism ends up lower than it should be, which can lead to weight regain. The reason is due to muscle loss. Therefore, you of course, want to keep your lean muscle mass, which brings weight lifting into the picture. You need not turn into a power lifter - just use your muscles, challenge them a bit and keep them strong. This will aid in keeping your metabolism in sync with your weight loss.
- Secondly, but equally as important, skip fad diets. They tend to make you drop weight too fast, thereby causing far too much loss in calorie-burning muscle mass instead of fat. This is a dangerous and possibly deadly trap to fall into, for each time you follow a diet that causes rapid weight loss, you are putting your muscles into jeopardy and sinking your metabolism lower. Each time you put your body through this, you have less muscle to burn fat with and more weight to lose. When you regain weight, you replace the lost muscle with fat. This is a much misunderstood and by many, unknown fact of dieting that could save many years of unwanted diet frustration. On any diet, never try to lose more than two pounds a week. See also: Lift Weight to Lose Weight
