Diet Is More Important Than Exercise
You always hear that diet and exercise are both important to weight loss, but dietary change is the more important of the two. As Dr. Donald Hensrud of the Mayo Clinic explains it, the only way to actually lose weight is to burn more calories than you consume. While exercise does burn calories, it is too difficult for many people to burn enough calories through exercise alone to lose weight. Making changes to your diet to reduce your daily caloric intake results in your body's metabolism burning more calories than you take in, resulting in weight loss even if you perform minimal exercise.
Overweight People Don't Have a 'Slow' Metabolism
Some people who are overweight blame it on a slow metabolism, but in fact the opposite is true: Those who are overweight typically have a faster metabolism than those who are not, resulting in them burning more calories during exercise and more calories per day in general. Caloric need is typically estimated as 2,000 calories per day, but your individual caloric need actually depends upon your gender, weight and age. You may need hundreds more calories than 2,000 per day to maintain your current weight, or you may require significantly fewer.
Low-Fat Foods Can Hurt Your Weight-Loss Efforts
You may be tempted to choose low-fat food options when trying to lose weight, but these choices may not actually be very effective. A comparison performed by the National Heart and Lung Institute found that there was little difference between standard and low-fat or fat-free versions of popular foods. Look for food choices that are low in calories or calorie free instead of looking for lower-fat options; this will help you to reduce your caloric intake and avoid accidental calorie increases caused by eating more of a low-fat snack food than you would of the regular variety.
The Plateau Effect Comes From a Slower Metabolism
Losing weight actually makes your metabolism slow down. As you exercise and eat a reduced-calorie diet over time, your body adjusts its caloric needs to create an equilibrium with your activity level and the calories you're taking in. To overcome the plateau effect, you need to once again start burning more calories than you bring in. Lowering your caloric intake further will work if it's safe to do so, or you can include new exercises or more repetitions in your routine to burn more calories per session.
'Negative' Calorie Foods Don't Help You Lose Weight
You've likely heard that celery and certain other foods have negative calories, meaning they require more calories to eat and digest than you take in by eating them. Unfortunately, these foods do not actually aid you in losing weight. While the theory of negative calories sounds plausible, no reputable studies have backed up the idea that eating these foods assists in weight loss or that they are anything more than low-calorie foods. Even if certain foods do require more calories to eat than they provide, the difference between the two is small enough that they wouldn't provide a real benefit to your weight-loss plans.
Artificial Sweeteners May Sabotage Your Diet
Diet soda may significantly increase your likelihood of becoming overweight, according to data presented in 2005 at the 65th Scientific Sessions conference of the American Diabetes Association. University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio researchers analyzed the results of the San Antonio Heart Study and discovered that each diet soda the participants drank per day made them "65 percent more likely to become overweight during the next seven to eight years, and 41 percent more likely to become obese." They speculate that the sweeteners may be responsible for stimulating the brain into craving more sweet foods, resulting in overindulging in other sweets.
