The basic concept of weight loss is that you need to create a calorie deficit either by eating fewer calories or burning more calories. That’s why cutting calories makes sense when it comes to weight loss. However, it is important to know that cutting too many calories from your diet can do more harm than good. Aside from harming your health eating too few calories can actually hinder your weight loss. This article will take a look at what you need to know about cutting calories to lose weight.

Since we know that consuming fewer calories results in weight loss it is easy to think that getting rid of lots of calories will result in even more weight loss, right? Unfortunately, that just isn’t the case. Extremely low calorie diets not only are unhealthy, but they may actually sabotage your efforts and make it more difficult for you to lose weight.

When you cut your calories too low your body reacts by going into “starvation mode”. Basically, what this means is that your body thinks that you are starving and is going to do whatever it can to help you maintain your current weight. As a result your metabolism will slow down so that your body can conserve energy and hold on to the fat reserves that you have. What this means is that it will become harder to lose weight which completely defeats the purpose of why you started cutting calories in the first place.

Not only do extremely low calorie diets (aka “starvation diets”) cause your metabolism to slow, but they also are very difficult to stick with.

When your body is not getting enough calories you will feel extremely hungry and be much more likely to fall off the bandwagon and binge.

Signs that you are not getting enough calories on your diet include feeling lightheaded, having headaches, having difficulty concentrating and general weakness.

Eventually when you cut too many calories you will just plain get too hungry and you will have to eat. Typically when you come off a diet that isn’t giving you the calories that your body needs you will be so hungry that you overeat. In most cases starvation diets not only don’t help you lose weight, but can actually cause you to gain instead.

A more common sense approach to weight loss is to eat enough calories for your body to continue functioning without thinking that you are starving. For faster results you can also try shifting calories, which basically means that you vary the number of calories that you eat each day.

This helps to keep your metabolism from slowing down and makes weight loss faster and easier in the long run.

Article Source