So what exactly ARE you losing when you lose weight quick?

Diet myth # 8: Lose weight quick schemes help your body

Finally advertisers of lose weight quick diets have caught onto something important: fat loss is more important than weight or water weight loss.

I would applaud them except that...merely swallowing a few diet pills or fat burners doesn't change your body composition in any permanent or healthy way. But that clever marketing could fool anyone.

Don't expect the weight loss industry to put your health before their profits - that just isn't going to happen! It's up to you to do what is healthy and what is natural.

Unless your basal metabolic rate (the rate at which your body consumes energy for basic bodily functions such as breathing, standing etc...) is increasing via muscle gain your chances of losing fat naturally are slim.

Of course there are plenty products that can raise your metabolic rate temporarily - but how safe are they and do you want to take them for life?

And by the way - it's only when you raise your basal metabolic rate that you WILL be able to burn calories faster even when you're sleeping because muscle uses more calories to stay alive whether you're awake or sleeping!

First comes water weight loss

Let's examine what happens on the average lose weight quick scheme. The first thing that happens is water weight loss. And, when our focus is just getting thin instead of getting healthy ... this is where we get so easily conned.

On the scale water weight loss looks impressive and it's enough to fool us. Because our focus is thin, we think: "This lose weight quick diet is fantastic, look how fast I've dropped 10 pounds."

So why am I not one weeny bit excited when you e.mail me thrilled with this weight loss? (I admit, I would have been in my yo-yo dieting years).

You only have to pick up a bucket of water to know how heavy it is which is what makes us so happy with the story we see on the scale. What's vastly more important though is the story behind this quick weight loss that you can't see on the scale.

You only need a 2-3% water weight loss to slow down your metabolism. Although you weigh less, you still haven't succeeded in losing fat because your body has held onto it's fat supplies. That's what it does the moment it senses deprivation.

So while you may look ligher on the scale, that mostly water weight loss, really means that your body now has a higher percentage body fat that before you started your lose weight quick diet.

The higher your percentage body fat, the slower your basal metabolic rate, the fewer calories you burn and more efficiently your body stores food as fat.

Next comes muscle loss

These fabulous 'help me lose weight fast diets' also shoot your efforts to lose fat in another way.

After your water weight loss comes muscle loss. Your body is still stubbornly holding onto it's fat. Now correct me if I'm um wrong but...isn't fat supposedly what you're trying to lose?

But... once again, on a scale, muscle loss looks impressive. Here's why? Muscle weighs three times what fat does on a scale.

Again - I'm not even vaguely excited at your ability to lose weight quickly because now, having spent almost 2 decades looking at obesity research, I know what I didn't know in my weight cycling days: muscle uses lots of energy (burns lots of calories) to stay alive.

The higher our percentage muscle, the higher our basal metabolism and the more calories we use. The less muscle we have, the slower our basal metabolic rate.

Having now lost muscle, in addition to our water weight loss, we have once again upped our percentage body fat relative to what it was when we first started our quick weight loss plan.

We've slowed our metabolism and are now less healthy than we were before. You see, when it comes to our body composition, it's not weight per se that is the health ogre (you can be healthy at any size) - it's our lifestyle and the percentage body fat we carry.

Next.. the lose weight quick diet fails you

So, on the scale, lose weight fast diets look fabulous. You're getting compliments and your clothes are loser, you're winning the weight war - right? Wrong!

Click here to find out why....

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