A Calorie Shifting Diet Explained

The basic idea behind dieting has been to try to cut the amount of calories that you consume. The theory has been that if you body has less calories, it will use up all the food rather than store any as fat. If you cut consumption enough, your body may need more than you give it so it should dip into its fat stores, thus helping you to lose fat.

This type of thinking gave rise to basic diets like Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig. They teach you how to eat just the right amount of calories by restricting portion size and identifying foods with high amounts of calories.

The problem with calorie reducing diets is that the dieter is left hungry and it is difficult to sustain the diet -- partly because of the discipline needed, and partly because everyone seems to hit a wall where they don't lose any more weight.

A calorie shifting diet also reduces calories, but not as drastically. The focus is on shifting those calories from one day to another. You may eat carbohydrates with lots of calories one day, but then on another day you eat mostly protein. The theory is that if your body thinks it is only getting x number of calories for a day or two, it should then burn off enough to maintain its weight with those calories. But then the diet changes that pattern to a different number for the next day. The body then readjusts its calorie burning. Since the body continues to get fats and proteins, it secretes a hormone to burn off the fat. Because the body is not fast enough to self regulate on the changes that the diet presents, the result is that fat is burned and there is usually a significant weight loss.

When we compare diet plans, one that we will want to look at is, calorie counting. Lets see how it compares to a calorie shifting diet..

Calorie counting works. It works especially well for some people. It works for disciplined people. Most proponents of this system argue that the healthiest way to lose weight is about a pound or two per week. That is what this diet will do for you.

The problem with calorie counting is the way your body adjusts to the diet. It is somewhat simplistic to say that if you consume 2,000 calories per day and your body burns 2,500 calories a day, you will lose weight. As true as that statement is, what eventually happens is that you body will see that you are only consuming 2,000 calories a day now, so it will slow its metabolism to only burn that many calories a day. This is what is sometimes termed "hitting the wall". It becomes very difficult to lose weight again until you reduce your calorie consumption once again.

By comparison, a calorie shifting diet really works well here. This diet does not keep a consistent tally of calories consumed and calories burned. Ideally those numbers should be different every day. By the time the body is able to figure that calorie consumption is at one level, it changes. Since the calorie consumption changes from day to day, the metabolism doesn't readjust as in the calorie counting diet, and therefore, there is no "hitting the wall." Also, because of the way the body burns fat (which will be discussed later), the dieter will continue to lose weight.

Is calorie shifting too fast? It is fast, and in the long run you will need to let the body catch up. The cells will need to adjust to less fat so that they don't go right back to the way they were. For that reason there are sometimes two version of this diet - one that will lose weight quickly, and one that will maintain or lose more gradually. The beauty of the calorie shifting diet, though, is that it is not starvation. You are eating foods you like and quantities that satisfy.

A very popular diet of late has been the low carbohydrate diet. This was made popular in the Atkins diet. The theory here is get your body to live on minimal carbohydrates. Eating instead from the protein and fat categories. You can eat meat and dairy, but almost completely cut out pizza and breads. This diet involves a lot of carb counting. You must know which foods have more carbs and what size portion has how many carbs. It gets to be almost more complex than calorie counting.

There is an induction phase which can be difficult for people who are used to carbohydrates. Later the diet can level out and not restrict carbohydrates quite as much. Then the dieter is allowed a little more balanced diet with an emphasis still on proteins instead of carbohydrates.

This diet does work, and it works especially well for some people. There are though a couple of problems. First is the induction period. This is the time when the dieter must make that conversion between lots of carbohydrates to hardly any. For some people it ilmost like withdrawal.

A second issue with a low carbohydrate diet is its complexity. From the beginning, the dieter needs to become familiar with the make-up of the food they are eating. They need to watch very closely how many grams of carbohydrates they eat. Even later, after the induction stage, there is quite a lot of trial and error to find the right balance of carbohydrates that works for your body.

A third issue is whether the body is getting the nutrients it needs in this diet. Vitamins and supplements are often recommended as ways to get vitamins that cannot be replaced from the lost carbohydrates, but some simply cannot be gotten any other way.

Now, how does this compare to a calorie shifting diet? Obviously, with calorie shifting, you are not going to be cutting carbohydrates out of your diet. So you do not go through withdrawals, and you do get a balanced diet. It may not hurt to take vitamins while on a CS diet just to make sure you are getting everything your body needs, but this diet will be closer to a natural balanced diet than any of the others that we have talked about.