You have tried diet after diet, you have endured exercise program after exercise program, and after all of that, you still want to know what to do if you can’t lose weight. If that sounds familiar, then you should know that you are not alone. A lot of people have tried all sorts of things to lose weight, all without any lasting success. Sure, you may lose a few pounds, but then you gain most of it back (or even end up weighing more than when you started).

Even though a lot of people have this problem, there really isn’t a universal solution; that’s because everybody is different. However, there are also some basic principles of weight loss that apply to virtually anybody.

If you are currently on a diet, and aren’t able to take off enough weight, then you have to take a close look at the diet plan to see if it can really work. Pay attention to the total number of calories it recommends per day, and see if it is too heavy or restrictive on certain groups of foods.

Each person needs a different number of calories, depending on various factors. If you take in more calories than you need, then it stands to reason that losing weight isn’t going to happen. But, the real problem can be taking in too few calories. While you may lose some weight, your body will go into starvation mode, and store a much higher percentage of your caloric intake. In other words, it won’t burn off as many calories as it normally would. This also makes it next to impossible to shed extra pounds. Therefore, you need to be on a diet that has the right amount of calories for you personally.

The other thing to watch out for are diets that are unbalanced. Most fad diets get popular because they have a gimmick of some kind. The Grapefruit Diet, Cabbage Diet and Cottage Cheese Diet are a few examples that put an emphasis on eating a particular food. There are also diets which restrict carbohydrates or fat, but if they don’t include a wide range of food choices then the odds of your getting results are low, and the odds of having permanent results are even lower.

Can all of those diets work? Yes! But…there is a catch. As mentioned, they almost always have a gimmick of some kind. It’s this gimmick that makes them popular. They use their little tricks to hide the real “secret” behind losing weight. This is important if you’re still wondering what to do if you can’t lose weight. The real secret is this: The only way to lose weight is to burn more calories than you take in.

That may not sell a lot of fad diets, but that’s what it all comes down to. If you can’t seem to get rid of those extra pounds, then you need to either reduce how many calories you’re taking in, or increase how many calories you’re burning off.

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It’s truly amazing there is anything anybody can agree on when it comes to what we eat. It seems as though we are bombarded with new scientific findings and new diet plans on a daily basis. To make matters worse, it often seems as though this information is contradictory. What’s a person to do? Well, you can rest easy, because there are some basic principles of eating that haven’t changed, and aren’t likely to change.

Let’s start with calories. A lot of fad diets do what they can to confuse the issue. They talk of “negative calorie” foods, or how special foods can burn fat. However, it all comes down to this: calories are energy. Therefore, if you want to lose weight, then you have to take in fewer calories than you burn.

If you want to gain weight, then you do the opposite. Also, if you restrict your caloric intake too much, your body will go into starvation mode, and will burn off calories much more slowly, making it harder to lose weight (if that’s your goal). So, that means you shouldn’t go too low in how much you eat, but rather take a sensible approach to your diet.

The other important aspect of calories is that all of them should count. That doesn’t mean you should count your calories and become obsessed with them. What it does mean, however, is that all of the calories you take in should have some nutritional value, or that they should count for something. That means getting rid of any empty calories. One of the biggest culprits here are sweetened soft drinks. these often are loaded with sugar and have zero nutritional value.

Now let’s turn to the fat in our diets. It wasn’t all that long ago that food manufacturers decided to roll out low-fat versions of many different products. This was in the hopes of capturing a share of the health-conscious market. While it is a fact that fat has 9 calories per gram (protein and carbohydrates only have 4), not all fats are the same.

For example, it is widely accepted that there is no healthy amount of trans fats; therefore you should do your best to completely eliminate them from your diet. Saturated fats are the next worst, but you can have some in your diet without too much worry, though you should limit them. Then there are the two categories of healthy fats: monounsaturated and polyunsaturated. You can’t necessarily eat as many of these as you want, but if you are going to be eating fats (and you should get some), then these are the better choices.

All eating really comes down to these two basic things: calories and fat. What diet plan you follow doesn’t matter as much as how you eat. So, when choosing an eating plan, be sure to look it over and that it also takes a sensible approach. When you do this, you will not only feel better about being on a healthy plan, you will also be much more likely to stick to it.

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