One of the main reasons why so many people have become overweight in the West is due to their eating too many calories. The consumption of more calories than are burned each day means that the body stores the extra calories as fat. The modern diet certainly allows a person to eat well beyond the calories they need to maintain their weight.
It is very informative to compare our consumption of calories with that of 100 years ago. In those days, the average person consumed 3,500 calories a day, which is approximately the same as we eat now. However, whereas in the early 1900s, most of the calories consumed were carbohydrates, & there was considerably less fat, modern fast food meals consist of almost 50% fat & fat is a big part of the modern diet.
They were more active in their work & their hobbies also made them exercise more. In contrast, modern work environments encourage sedentary habits & their hobbies tend to revolve around computers & television. As a consequence, while in the 1900’s people’s calories were burned as fuel that day, most of our calorie consumption ended up being stored as fat. Even exercise can only go so far if calorie consumption remains at previous levels, without the general level of activity.
As our working habits have changed, so have our calorie requirements. The average person now needs around 2000-2500 calories a day to keep them at their present weight. The best way to work out exactly how much you should be eating to maintain your present waistline is by using a bar, which is the basal metabolic rate the number of calories you burn every day, even if you sleep for 24 hours. People who weigh more actually have a larger (BMR) than those who look slimmer & a reduction in their calorie intake, even if the calories still total more than that eaten by a thinner person, will help them lose weight.
The important factor to remember when considering how many calories you need to eat each day is that it does not matter so much what you eat, quite so much as how much you eat of course, anyone who eats a diet solely of fat will not get slim, no matter what some diet books tell you. However, neither is one cupcake going to sink your entire weight-loss plan. A diet in which all of the food groups are eaten in appropriate quantities lasts much longer than starvation diets & fad diets. Going on to a very low-calorie diet for long periods will cause your metabolism to slow down the opposite of what you want. If you find that you reach a weight & cannot lose any more, then you will need to amend your diet.
On a diet, you will find that your (BMR) will fall so that a calorie intake that once helped you to lose weight is now keeping you from losing any more. Rather than just do more exercise (which has a limit on how much more you can do) you need to alter again the amount of calories you are consuming. A diet with limited calories will work for a short period, but the body will adjust to the new diet & stop losing weight.
Conventional wisdom, scientific facts & various diet gurus have allocated approximately 3500 calories to a pound of body weight. When embarking on a weight loss program, for example, one would have to consume 3500 fewer calories than is usually consumed over a certain period to lose one pound of weight. What must be borne in mind however is that this does not necessarily apply in the exact same manner as one continues to progress with the weight loss program.
As it happens, unfortunately for the person on the program as the body becomes increasingly accustomed to consuming less food, calories are expended at a slower rate.
The phenomenon that has been described above is called diet-induced adaptive thermo genesis. This phenomenon can be likened to a slowdown in metabolic rate or the rate at which the body burns calories. The mechanism has been equated to the human body’s innate tendency to protect itself against starvation.
The human body has identified the lower calorie intake and adapts by becoming ultra-efficient by maximizing on the amount of calories it is currently consuming albeit at a slower rate. The primary manner in which this is achieved is by actually protecting its fat stores or reserves rather than tapping into lean tissue or muscle to provide it with the calories it will need to continue its day-to-day functioning. This will inevitably lead to a loss of muscle & the associated slowing of the metabolic rate, which contributes to the slowing weight loss.
It has already been established that in general the more muscle that is distributed in an individual the higher the metabolic rate. This is easily explained by the fact that in general men have a higher rate of metabolism than women having a bearing on the fact that they have on average a higher proportion of muscle than women.
Also, a twenty-year-old has a higher metabolism than an eighty-year-old person because of the fact that they have on average more muscle. Muscle tissue expends much more calories than fat, so when we lose muscle tissue, our metabolic rate becomes slower and fewer calories can be expended. Previous research studies have shown that the body loses a relatively large amount of muscle tissue when a relatively low-calorie intake has been registered and once again the metabolic rate has been suppressed.
The good news is that there are various ways to ensure that muscle tissue is not lost when calorie intake has been lowered. The first step is to make sure that you have a sufficient calorie intake with a sensible diet of not less than 1200-1000 calories per day. The other alternative is to build muscle which will speed up your metabolism. Muscle building is enhanced by the increase in exercise levels. Various types of exercise help the body to speed up the metabolic rate in different ways.
The first type of exercise can be classed as aerobic exercise, which includes such activities as jogging, swimming and spinning. This type of exercise tends to tone muscle and burn fat. The lowering of the fat-to-muscle ratio does speed up the rate of metabolism for example to some extent. The second type of exercise which is strength or resistance training will build muscle and lower the ratio much faster. Some studies document that for every extra pound of muscle that you have, you will lose an extra 50 calories per day.
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