A program of gradual cutting back on calories combined with burning them through exercise is the best, healthiest, most permanent way to lose weight. It's the only way to lose fat and not muscle, to raise your metabolism and lower your appetite.

Perhaps if you understand more about why this is true you'll be motivated for a regular exercise routine and stop crash dieting.


Metabolism is the process by which digested fats, proteins and carbohydrates are burned with the help of oxygen to create energy. This is what "burning calories" means.
The muscles, which make up the largest part of our body, are the key to a well-tuned metabolism because they are responsible for burning almost all of the calories we consume. The more muscle we have, the more calories we burn. This is true not only while we exercise but while we are at rest as well.
After age thirty, we tend to lose 5 to 5 percent of our muscle every ten years. This accounts for a lowered metabolism and the tendency to put on weight more easily as we grow older.
As we gain fat our metabolism slows down even more because, unlike active muscle tissue, stored fat is inactive. It doesn't burn calories. Fat is calories—5,500 of them contained in each pound of fat—the body's densest fuel.

If we try to lose weight too rapidly by starving ourselves, the body will fight back. It does so by lowering the metabolism in an attempt to conserve calories and fat which it needs for fuel. In addition, if our diet does not supply enough food to fuel the body, we may begin to lose lean muscle tissue, since the body will be forced to get its fuel from the proteins that repair and compose our muscles. A series of crash diets can lower our metabolism by 10 to 14 percent! This is the main reason we tend to put on weight so fast and so easily when we come off these diets.

Exercise For weight loss, aerobic exercise is unequaled when combined with a balanced, moderate diet. Aerobic exercise is the only way to lose fat and not lose muscle, too. In order to power the large leg and buttocks muscles being used, aerobic exercise will first draw upon fuel available in the bloodstream. As the demand for fuel persists with continuous aerobic exercise, the body will next draw upon stored fat—the fat stored inside the muscles themselves as well as the fat stored all over the body just beneath the skin. Burning up these fat stores is something dieting alone can't do. It requires lots of oxygen —in the large amounts we draw in during aerobic exercise. If we run or walk a mile briskly, for example, we will burn approximately 100 calories—while preserving our muscle. Going faster won't burn many more calories than this, but increasing distance will.
Here are a few weight loss pointers:

• Lose weight gradually, reducing your daily calorie intake by no more than 500 calories. This will be easier to stick to and won't cause your body either to draw upon the protein in muscle for energy or to lower your metabolism in order to conserve calories. You'll also be less likely to feel the desire to binge.

• Plan to eliminate hundreds of additional calories by burning them through aerobic exercise at least three times a week.

• Eat plenty of complex carbohydrates with a special emphasis on Vegetables which are low in calories but high in nutrition and fiber. You want to avoid the popular high-protein/low-carbohydrate diets that cause a quick weight loss, but mostly from water and muscle. These are the pounds that come right back on after you stop dieting minus the muscle.

• Cut back on sugars.

• Cut back on fat, emphasizing low-fat and nonfat dairy products.

• Eat a healthy breakfast: it will give you energy for the day, you'll burn the calories and you'll feel less deprived, therefore less apt to crave a quick-energy (sugar) hit.

• Try to eat dinner before six P.M. Fewer of the calories you consume close to bedtime will be burned off. If you get hungry in those nighttime hours after dinner, have low-calorie snacks on hand or try a relaxing cup of chamomile tea.

• Establish regular eating habits—three planned meals a day at routine intervals consisting of a wide variety of foods, including solid, fibrous foods you must chew.

• Eat slowly, deliberately, chewing well. Avoid absentminded eating while watching TV, reading or talking on the phone.

• When you feel a binge coming on, take a long walk for an hour or so, if possible.