Get off the merry-go-round of dieting

Trying to lose weight? Been on diets before? You need to re-think “dieting.”

The problem with diets is that you cut back on eating and send your body into famine mode. You lose muscle mass and as a result lower your metabolism making it harder to burn fat. Plus you feel more tired. Maybe you lose some weight. Once you go off the diet, however, you have less muscle mass and thus will gain weight back easier than before. Very frustrating. We call it the yo-yo cycle of dieting.

You need to understand a few things. Once you have created a fat cell in your body, you can never get rid of it; you can only empty it. You need to maintain your muscle mass so you can keep your metabolism working at the highest possible level to burn fat. Also realize that as you do lose fat, you are also shedding the toxins in your body. Those nasty things tend to get stored in with the fat and come back into circulation as the fat is used up. Drink plenty of water to flush the toxins out.

You want to include a lot of leucine in your diet. Leucine helps you maintain muscle while burning fat, decrease cravings, stabilize your blood sugar levels, and and will keep you feeling less hungry. You need to keep your body healthy while shedding fat, so eat more, smaller meals. Starving yourself will lower your metabolism and make your body want to hang on the your fat even more. So eat well and often but with smaller portions and try to avoid the things you know you shouldn’t eat. Exercise – find something you like to do that gets you up and moving around: running, dancing, swimming, walking, etc.


Focuses on losing inches not weight. Muscle weighs more than fat but you don’t want to lose muscle mass. Fat weighs less but takes up more room. So focus on losing inches = fat. Take a good, all-natural vitamin to keep your body’s nutrient needs met to help you not feel hungry.

Good luck and stick with it!