Your Diet Will Never Get You Anywhere

 

Researchers have recently shown that a low-carbohydrate diet appears to be effective in helping overweight people shed pounds safely. In 2008, a study appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, titled, "Weight Loss With a Low-Carbohydrate, Mediterranean, or Low-Fat Diet." The study seems reasonable conclusive, with people losing more weight on the low-carb diet than on the others, and without any of the supposed health risks that some people claim are associated with low-carb eating.

So that's cool. To get fit at last just requires a low-carb diet and time, right? Not exactly. We need to look into this a bit more to see why a great diet plan isn't enough to get you the fitness you are looking for.

One major concern is that dieting alone doesn't do anything to help you retain your muscles. Many people don't know this, but once we reach thirty or so years of age, we tend to lose muscle mass. An average person will lose 5-10 pounds of muscle for every decade they age beyond the age of 30. And dieting doesn't change that. It might reduce the amount of fat concealing your shrinking muscles, but it won't maintain those muscles, much less build more muscle mass.

Now this latest study didn't specifically look at muscle mass (a search of the original report didn't even turn up a mention of muscle) so it's possible that one type of diet could have more of an effect on muscle mass than another. But going by the results of this study, there's no reason to believe that any type of diet will do anything special to prevent the gradual muscle loss that comes with age. It's going to be hard to build an awesome body when your youthful, sexy muscles are slowing fading away.

Second, the results cited in this study are lame. The participants were overweight men and women, or people with Type 2 diabetes. They were placed on one of three types of diet. Each person also received instructions and information related specifically to the type of diet they were on. Over the course of two years, each group of people got a total of 27 hours worth of meetings with a dietician who helped them stay with the plan. People who had trouble sticking to the plan received motivational phone calls as well.

The results of all this? For people who stuck with it the entire two years, the average weight loss for the low-fat diet was 3.3 kg (7.27 lb), for the Mediterranean diet was 4.6 kg (10.14 lb), and for the low-carb diet was 5.5 kg (12.13 lb). In addition, participants saw some improvement in cholesterol levels and other health markers.

These results are very discouraging. With a lot of support and professional coaching, the best diet only resulted in the long-term loss of about a half a pound a month. There's no denying that for an overweight person to lose weight safely over the long term is a good thing, but we're not talking about impressive results here. What about for you? Would losing 12 pounds in 2 years, while simultaneously losing some of your youthful muscle, make you happy?

A healthy diet is surely a good thing, and crucial to building the body you want. But as this study shows, dieting alone won't get you there. The secret to superior health and fitness is http://getfitatlast.com">a plan that combines diet and exercise.