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Calorie shifting is the hottest buzz in the weight loss industry these days, but although most people don’t really know how it works, it is not new. The method has been quietly used by smart people in the fitness industry for years and will help nearly anyone shed huge amounts of fat poundage pretty quickly. Compared to a run of the mill low fat or low calorie diet, a calorie shifting type diet is like a walk in the park because it will not make the dieter miserable while she’s on it.
Calorie shifting is a weight loss strategy designed to combat the natural slowdown that occurs in your metabolism whenever your caloric intake is restricted. The theory, now long proven, is that it is possible to manipulate your body’s metabolism level to induce fat burning. This is done simply by varying the types and amounts calories that you eat each day, usually over the course of 7 to 14 days.
A quick example would be to severely restrict your calories for 5-7 days, then eat normally or even overeat just a little for 2 days. Then repeat with 5-7 days of calorie restriction. The optimal number of days under calorie restriction differs for each person but the dieter will be losing fat while finding out. The method works very well for virtually everyone. So the best thing to do is just to get started on it without over thinking it. You will lose body fat.
The calorie shifting diet is the most effective way to keep your metabolism running at peak performance while shedding body fat and keeping muscle tone. If used properly it will unleash the body’s hidden fat burning potential and can actually increase metabolism causing more rapid weight loss to occur. The best selling Fat Loss 4 Idiots Diet is probably the most popular example of a diet plan that uses the calorie shifting method, and it is available online. A clear advantage of “Fat Loss 4 Idiots” is an Online Diet Generator that creates customized meals based on the foods the user likes. This seems like a match for a busy person or someone who is not interested in reading food labels and counting calories. The food selection on “Fat Loss 4 Idiots” is pretty boring, but if you’re able to use herbs and spices to dress up the food a little it works just fine for rapid, ongoing fat loss of 10-100 pounds.
Metabolism-What Happens When We Diet
The human body is amazing in its efficiency at adapting to various hardships and stressors and this includes a severe calorie restriction diet, which to the body means starvation. The body gets the message fairly quickly and then promptly makes the necessary adjustments to maintain homeostasis. In other words the body will slow it’s metabolism down to a slow crawl. Which means fat loss slows as well. This is what happens when a dieter hits a plateau and she stops losing weight several weeks into a diet.
That’s a good thing if you are a member of a tribe of early humans and your meals are feast or famine, because your body would slow it’s metabolism down and you could live off of your fat stores. But if you’re a slightly pudgy soccer mom with a high school reunion coming up in a month, it’s not helping you at all.
The body’s normal responses to severe dieting include:
 Decreased levels of T3 and T4 thyroid hormones, which play a principal part in regulating your metabolism faster or slower.
- Decreased metabolic rate because of the thyroid decrease and other elements.
- Increased levels of cortisol which is a very catabolic or “muscle wasting” hormone.
- Also, decreased leptin levels have been observed. Leptin is the hormone that tells the body to use fat for energy. Lower levels of this hormone are the opposite of what you want during a fat loss diet.
Plus a few other responses that make the state of severe dieting an undesirable way to go through life, even for a short time. You are fatigued and snappy, and generally not in a good mood. And if you keep going like this the worse it gets.
This is why it’s so hard to lose the last 10 pounds of “stubborn fat.” Because at the later stages of a diet, the metabolism is so down regulated that your T3 and T4 levels are down to a trickle and leptin levels are nonexistent. You need to eat.
On the other hand if you’re smart, and the body’s metabolism is kept running high by eating normally at regular intervals during a diet, you will not stop losing fat at all but can accelerate it. It’s much better if you don’t let your metabolism get too out of line in the first place. This is where a diet program like Fat Loss 4 Idiots or the Cyclic Ketogenic Diet comes in.
For more details about the Fat Loss 4 Idiots Diet , the website is here.
For many reasons a diet like this is perfect for people at all levels, from just a little overweight to real health threatening obesity. Because the diet program will prevent the down regulation of the metabolism by regular meals of wisely chosen calories.
The Fat Loss 4 Idiots diet consists of a downloadable handbook that tells you everything you need to know to get good results with the diet. Plus the dieter gets access to the Online Diet Generator that custom creates diet meals according to individual food preferences. The program allows selection between the regular diet plan and a vegetarian plan and then will ask for 14 favorite foods that the dieter likes to eat. The Generator creates an 11 day diet menu with foods that you actually like to eat included in 4 meals per day, and you are allowed to eat until you are satisfied. This diet is pretty easy to stick with and seems to melt the fat off fairly quickly.
After the initial 11 days you are instructed to take 3 days off and eat whatever you want within reason. You have now finished 1 cycle of the diet and should be 5-15 pounds lighter. You can go on the diet for one cycle and stop if you’re satisfied with where you are or you can repeat the diet cycle over and over until your fat loss goal is reached.
The rules of this diet are very simple and straight-forward, as outline below:
1. Eat only until you are satisfied but not until you are too full.
2. Leave a minimum gap of 2.5 to 3 hours between meals.
3. Eat only the foods prescribed to you according to the calorie shifting meal plan at each meal.
4. You must eat exactly 4 meals per day, no more and no less.
5. You have a choice to eat any of the 4 meals in any order throughout the day.
6. You must take a 3-day break from the diet on days 12 through 14 of your diet, before you may resume the diet again. This is to give your body a chance to rest from the rapid weight loss that you will be experiencing.
Here are some sample meal plans that you will be following. The diet plan lasts for 11 days but only 3 days are included here, just to give you an idea of how the plan is structured and to give you a sense of how satisfying and sustainable this diet truly is.
Keep in mind that each of these four meals may be eaten in any order throughout the day, as long as you only eat that the designated foods at each of their respective meals.
 Day 1:
Meal #1: Scrambled Eggs Meal
Meal #2: Sandwich (any type)
Meal #3: Flavored Oatmeal
Meal #4: Tuna Salad
Day 2:
Meal #1: Cottage Cheese
Meal #2: Scrambled Eggs [and] Mixed Vegetables
Meal #3: Chicken
Meal #4: Banana Milk Shake
Day 3:
Meal #1: Chicken
Meal #2: Fish Filet
Meal #3: Cottage Cheese
Meal #4: Fruit Salad
At the beginning of this article we wrote that calorie shifting is not anything new and it’s not. What’s new is the way the Fat Loss 4 Idiots diet has made the diet more convenient for busy people. Before now this method involved A LOT of planning and label reading, so the verdict here is that Fat Loss 4 Idiots is an improvement to an already smart fat loss method.
As someone who has helped literally hundreds of people to reform their bodies, I have to say if you’re a busy person that’s on the go all the time, this diet program is a winner. It does all the calculating for you; you just eat. Remember that any diet works best when combined with a well thought out exercises program of light cardio and weight training.
(information from Real Fat Loss Results - http://fattloss4idiots.net/blog/diet-reviews/1484/)
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