Patriot Health Digest
These diet mistakes will only backfire on you, plus they can seriously harm your long-term progress. Here is what you should NOT do to lose weight.
1 – Getting yourself into caloric deficit by only strict caloric restriction
To burn fat, the most important rule is to be in a caloric deficit and eat sufficient protein.
The quality of your food matters a lot when it comes to health. It also has an affect on fat loss. But the truth is, if you are in a caloric deficit, you will shed pounds.
But being in a caloric deficit does not necessarily mean consuming less. It means eating less energy than what you are USING each day. You can create a deficit by lowering your food intake, increasing your activity or even better, by doing both.
By eating more calories and then exercising more, you have several advantages:
- You are more likely to keep or even increase your learn muscle mass.
- You will have less cravings.
- It’s more easily sustained longterm. Eating very low calories is not sustainable. This is why over 85% of the people who lose weight eventually regain it.
2 – Lowering your calories or carbs more when you are already losing fat at an acceptable rate
Being greedy when it comes to fat loss is even worse for you than being greedy with your muscle gain. When you lower your food intake too much, you will:
- Lose your muscle.
- Have metabolic adaptations that trigger cravings and ruin your energy.
- Hurt your libido.
- Make it almost impossible to sleep due to cortisol staying up chronically, which leads to more adrenaline.
- Having nutritional deficiencies.
Simply put, the more you lower your food intake, the more you raise your chances of bad things occurring.
3 – Bulking when you are already sorta fat
Trying to do a caloric surplus with good protein is required to form muscle at a max rate.
Carbs are especially crucial due to the physiological response they cause (increasing your mTOR, IGF-1, and insulin, possibly lowering cortisol) which help with muscle growth. Not to mention, carbs give superior fuel for doing resistance training, leading to better muscle building performance.
A review of the information on keto found that while it is adequate for weight and fat loss, it causes inferior size and muscle gains compared to carb diets.
Up to a certain point, eating more calories and carbs will help your muscle growth. However, beyond a certain point, it will only cause marginally better gains, if any.
Author: Blake Ambrose
