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Saturday, April 6, 2013

Have You Crashed Your Metabolism?

By Russ Hollywood


There are many people around the world who are struggling with weight loss and today we will be looking at one of the main reasons behind this. If you are in a situation where you feel like you simply cannot lose weight no matter how little you eat or how long you stay on the treadmill, you aren't by yourself in this predicament.

If you are one of those individuals, today's article will help you to pinpoint the issue. []

If you know someone who seems to try very hard with their diet but cannot shift any more weight no matter what they do, the issue is usually something known as metabolic damage. Metabolic damage is a condition associated with a growing number of people in today's society due to the every increasing pressure to find a quick fix solution. The symptoms are usually associated with individuals who do the following two things:

1. Constantly following a low calorie diet.

2. An exhausting, long cardiovascular workout plan involving many hours on treadmills and elliptical trainers.

Almost every individual who has damaged their metabolism as a result of trying to shed body fat follow at least one of the two things listed above. Let's take a deeper look into each factor so you can determine whether this issue has happened to you.

The main cause of this problem is a poor diet. By following a restrictive eating plan which feels as though your are punishing yourself for wanting to drop body fat you can actually be making it even harder for yourself to succeed without realizing it. This is because your body reacts to a sudden drop in calories by shutting down your body's metabolism in a bid to hang on to what reserves it has left in it's stores, because it doesn't believe you are feeding it enough to survive.

It also usually corresponds with a very long cardiovascular program in the gym. It's common to hear ladies talking about spending an hour or more running on the treadmill each day while following this type of diet in a bid to lose fat.

Of course, this only adds to the problems and forces the body to work even harder to slow down the metabolism and hang onto it's vital fat stores. So despite working very hard, you physically cannot lose anything. If this sounds like a situation you have been in at some point, you are not alone.

What usually happens here is the individual gets frustrated before completely quitting. When they do this, they suddenly binge on junk foods and then pile a lot of weight back on because their body has adapted to a very low calorie diet, so it doesn't know how to handle the sudden jump in the opposite direction. This is why many people who follow these fad diets tend to end up heavier in the long term.

After gaining this fat quite quickly following their binge eating phase, people usually get quite hard on themselves and make a decision to get things back on track. There is nothing wrong with that. The only problem is, of course, that they jump back on the restrictive diet which wasn't working for them last time and then they place even more restriction on it second time around.

If this sounds like it's happened to you, you are probably wondering how to correct this issue.

Correcting a damaged metabolism is actually relatively easy, the main problem comes in getting somebody to recognize they have the condition in the first place. They are usually so caught up in the idea of dropping more fat that they don't want to hear the solution. Getting your metabolism back on track requires a slow, gradual increase in your daily calorie intake over the course of anything from six months to a year. Small increases of around 5% have been shown to yield the most positive results. It's simply about teaching your body how to maintain your weight despite eating more food. You can still exercise during this time, of course, but you should switch your focus away from endless cardiovascular exercise and towards high intensity interval training. It's been shown to yield far superior results as well as requiring much less time in the gym.

Fixing metabolic damage can take a while, sometimes over a year, so be patient. But if you can't lose weight no matter what you do in the gym and you recognize these symptoms from your current lifestyle then you have no reason to carry on with your existing routine. Understanding weight loss is often turned into a form of rocket science, but the facts are simple when you clear away the nonsense. If you have damaged your metabolism, your body needs to repair it before it will allow you to diet effectively.




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