The 1200 Calorie a Day Diet - Reasons Why the 1200 Calorie Diet Does Not Work

The majority of people think, that if you want to lose lots of weight, then you have to eat very little. It seems very straight forward, that the less food you eat, the more weight you lose. So the very low calorie diets, such as the 1200 calorie a day diet, are very popular. But the numbers speak for themselves and although people are using more diets, then ever before the number of obese and overweight people still increases all the time. The reasons is because very low calorie diets do not help people to lose weight.

The 1200 calorie a day diet - Why it does not work

• One of the first things that occur, when people cut their calories very low, is that the metabolism slows down. Basically the less you food you eat, the calories your body burns. This also means the more you eat, the more calories your body burns.For example when you cut your calories from 2000 calories to 1200, then your body gets a lot less energy.So the body then obviously has to conserve energy and it does that by slowing down the metabolic rate. 

• The metabolism can slow down by 25-30% and sometimes even up to 45%, when calories are dropped very low. For example it is the same as having your daily energy expenditure drop from 2500 calories to 1375 calories. This is why people can eat very little food for long periods, but still not lose much weight. 

• A much better option is to reduce your calories just below your maintenance level, by about 15-20% and burn a lot of calories with exercise. For example if your maintenance level is 2000 calories, then reducing it by 20% to 1600 would be very good. That way your metabolism does not slow down and you burn more calories. Of course exercise burns also a lot of calories and it also speeds up your metabolic rate.

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