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Dieting and calories

It is said that a good diet is one that has no less than 1,200 to 1,400 calories.

That’s so wrong and I’ll prove it.

The first phase of the protein-sparing diet that I recommend contains just under 1,200 calories and the calorie count can go as low as 800 to 1,000, depending on the individual.

Is this sheer madness or is it well founded? Question: Do you think that the hundreds of thousands of people who have followed this protocol stayed motionless in bed the whole time in order to adjust to the lack of calories? Of course not! They kept up virtually the same activities and expended the same amount of energy.

Let’s say that you jogged on a treadmill at a gym for ½ hour. At the end of that half-hour, the treadmill tells you how many calories you burned. Does it know what you ate and how many calories there are in your diet? Of course not!

If your regular daily energy needs total 2,000 calories, they’ll stay more or less the same while you’re on the protein-sparing diet, and 800 to 1,000 of those calories will come from the foods you eat. So, where do the rest of the calories you need for your normal activities come from? From the pounds you drop. From the burning of fat and gluconeogenesis.

Remember that 2 pounds of fat equal 9,000 calories and that your body is able to turn its amino acids, particularly those in your muscles, into glucose when carbohydrate (simple and complex sugars) intake is significantly reduced. That natural process, called GLUCONEOGENESIS, keeps your blood sugar level constant even when sugar is eliminated from your diet. What happens with those so-called 1,200- to 1,400-calorie balanced diets with a balanced carbohydrate intake? Well, they challenge your body more and promote weight gain.

Let me explain: a 1,200- to 1,400-calorie diet that includes carbohydrates often prevents the body from drawing on its reserves, resulting in little to no weight loss; however, 1,200 to 1,400 calories per day is not enough for normal activities, which require 2,000 calories per day.

The problem: the body easily adapts to deprivation.

The more money you have, the more you spend and vice versa. When faced with lasting deprivation, your body decreases its needs and energy expenditure to adapt, and once you go back to eating a normal amount of calories, it might be overwhelmed because it is no longer accustomed to that many calories. It became used to chronic deprivation.

Paradoxically and contrary to what is believed, the above situation is less likely to occur with the protein-sparing diet, which has fewer calories. Why? Simply because the significant drop in carbohydrate intake forces your body to burn its reserves efficiently. And remember, 2 pounds of fat equal 9,000 calories. Therefore, your body will not have to deprive itself because it’ll have all the energy it needs.