This question has bothered a lot of people who although had the zeal and the enthusiasm to lose fat but never could really produce tangible results even after trying different fad diets.
A diet that you like is the best diet for you.
This topic is actually so huge and covers so many different aspects of life that one entire book can be filled.
I will try to explain it in as few words as possible.
Ideally , a diet high in proteins and very little carbohydrates and VERY HIGH fats , if taken over a period of at least 14 days straight, has been known to cause drastic fat loss in the body due to an effect known as the Ketogenic Effect.
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| 65% FAT 30% PROTEIN 5% Green Leafy Fibrous veggies and 0% Sugar! |
For people who think in the mass media propagated propaganda that eating fats makes us fat , please refer to my upcoming article called FATs.
Mind you, in the Ketogenic diet, you'll have to eat less than 200 calories of carbs a day for an average man.
That too you cant do just like that, you have to progressively decrease your carb intake slowly so that your body and mind becomes accustomed to the diet and yo do NOT fall off the Ketogenic Diet wagon.
Very soon I will put an article on how to calculate your own calorific intake and nutrient ratios.
Normally our body uses a combination of muscle and fat to meet our energy needs if our food intake is less than its supposed to be.
In the Ketogenic diet effect, only FAT is burned primarily for ALL energy needs of the body such as breathing, thinking, pumping of heart, running of organs, flow of lymph etc.
Normally, we can lose at max around 300-500 calories per hard exercise session.
But in Ketogenic effect body burns about 1000 plus calories in a day, without exercising :D
Of course, people still exercise in the period too so that they don't lose out on any muscle they have gained.
To know more about muscle and its wonders I will post a different article called Muscles.
Elite bodybuilders use this method of eating “very less carbohydrates and a high protein and a HIGH FAT” diet just a couple of weeks prior to their competition.
This helps them to ‘cut’ or burn the last part of the stubborn body fat which they were not able to do so earlier with cardio and Weight Training and regular dieting as fat loss becomes progressively slower as the time goes
Even a regular eat-as-much-as-your-body-requires aka a complete diet works wonders on people who have never exercised ever!
For an example, a very obese person who has not exercised ever, will lose almost 10% of their weight in the first month or two.
Imagine if the same person lost her weight and is almost 4-5 kilos away from her target weight which is appropriate for her height , those 5 kilos may take a couple of months.
So its easier to lose a lot of weight in the beginning as the body gets shocked to the core and plus a healthy diet full of fresh fruits, pulses, milk, meat , eggs , fish and wheat and rice makes the body fully charged and running at an optimum level.
Coming back to the Keto Diet.
This is not a diet for the weak hearted. As we know that essentially all the delicious food comes under carbohydrates... i.e. ice creams, chocolates, cakes , chips, rice and wheat and other sweet and/or baked goods etc etc.
Proteins include all dairy products, meat and fish an eggs. Also in pulses and other vegetables in smaller amounts.
Nuts and seeds and egg yolk are some examples of food that contain fats in large amounts.
No food belongs to 100% in one food group except egg white. Egg white is 100% protein.
Everyone cant hold on to this diet for long. I myself can't stay for more than a couple of days. Sadly, it does not show its full effect untill 14 days of strict adhering to rules.
Mind you I am not saying that you have to eat less in this period. You can eat what your body requires and still lose fat.
And when we do anything physical , our body requires a large amount of food as energy A 5’10” man with a weight of about 100 kilogrammes doing 1 hour of hard exercise a day can expect to eat around 2500 calories a day and still lose tons of fat!
The is the same man of 100 kilos can lose up to 8-9 kilos a month on this diet. The higher you stay in this program, the higher your rate of fat loss... After 1 month it stabilises. Anyways doctors say that it is harmful to be on this diet for long as we cant get essential nutrients and minerals from such kind of diet.
It is very important that you check with your doctor before going on this diet to be sure not to harm anything inside you.
Fitness models and bodybuilders go on this diet for 20 days to a month to cut the last bit of fat from their bodies and look super ripped.
They DO NOT DO THIS FOR A LONGer TIME than a month.
Even if your heart is made of steel and you can do a month of this diet easily , still you have 11 more months remaining to go on a More healthy and natural diet.
But, I Dont follow this diet myself... you ask why ?
So what can a normal person like you and me who loves carbs ( carbohydrates ) and cant even hold on to a few days of ‘Keto Diet’do about this problem ?
We can follow a simple program of eating slightly less than our bodily requirements as the fat loss on a carb inclusive diet is slower.
The basic thing is that we need to eat slightly lesser than what our body requires in a given day to be able to create a ‘calorie deficit’ in our body and subsequently lose fat.
If we do any exercise which makes us sweat a lot , we can ramp up the fat loss process. We can lose about 100 gms per day for a man of 100 kilos with an hour of exercise and eating 2000 calories.
A general thumb rule for having done a nice exercise session is that your T shirt is dripping with sweat and you are wet behind the ears.
Lets say that according to your body type, age, sex and level of physical activity, the calorie requirement for the
80 kilo male body for a day comes to around 2000 calories/day.
CASE 1
Lets say that on a particular day we ate food worth 2500 calories.
( Calorie is a unit for energy. Eg : A regular big banana contains around 150 calories.)
So, out of those 2500 calories, about 2000 calories was used by the body to do the normal bodily functions like pumping the heart, breathing, thinking( yeah thinking takes energy too ;) )etc.
We have 500 calories left now.
Now if we do hard exercise for an hour, we would burn those 500 calories . And, even though we ate more than we ought to, we still would be of the same weight since the extra calories were neutralized by the exercise and subsequently we lost fat .
You would ask then what is the use of such a waste system. At the end of the day you weigh the same even after exercising like an ass for an hour ??
The beauty lies in details too!
When you lose(by exercising), you lose fat from ur system ... but, when you gain, you primarily gain muscles( from eating).
Imagine you have a lot of fat or butter in your hands like how a cricket wicketkeeper cups both his hands to be able to catch a ball.
You are struggling to hold it with both your hands lest you drop it.
Now , imagine that you are holding some muscle or meat in your hand and you can easily hold it with ONE hand and that too you can cover with your fingers.
If you were to measure the amount of fat and muscle separately on a scale, you would be surprised to see that they have the same weight!
This means even though your scale still shows the same number, you clothes will get loose . And you will start looking much better as your body will be dispelling fat which is ugly, gooey, semi liquid and irregular and start putting on muscle which is beautiful, firm and takes a much lesser ‘space’ in the body.
If we had not exercised and were eating more than required or a binge eating diet, then our body would have stored this ‘excess’ of energy got from food for a later use.
The best way for the body to store it for future use is to store it as fat!!
However if we had just held on to the natural diet for our body and eating as required by our body, we would neither lose nor gain any weight.
Ayurvedic texts of ancient times done by hardcore scientists or Rishis says that we should fill half our stomach with food, ¼ th with water and let 1/4th be empty so that gas has a space to form and does not cause discomfort to the person.
They, the ancient rishis, lived for more than 100 years with sound health and full fit. Still in India you will find a lot of Yogis living for 100 years. BKS Iyengar died in his late nineties.
CASE 2
Now, lets say that we ate only 2000 calories worth of food on a particular day.
Again, there can only be two options, either we worked out or we didnt.
If we didn't work out, the body would use the 2000 calories in doing the regular bodily functions and no ‘extra’ energy would be left at the end of the day.
Hence, we would look exactly the same as the previous day since we didn't lose or gain anything.
But , If we had exercised hard for even half an hour ... our body would have used up 300 calories out of the 2000.
Now, the body has a shortage of 300 calories, since it needs these 300 calories to maintain some part of our body functions.
So how will it achieve this ?
The body will then burn the fat which was stored earlier to get the energy required!
Voila!
So, we can clearly see that by eating the ‘right’ amount we can lose fat even with as little as 30 minutes of exercising whereas on the other hand even if you work out hard for an hour and then stuff yourself afterwards... you are pretty much in a loss since you didn't lose any weight plus you put so much effort in exercising.
