Fitness Together Georgia

This is a big myth I fight to debunk everyday. The truth is that your body can’t tell the difference between you dramatically reducing your calories to lose weight with a diet or starvation.

Why It’s A Myth

The science behind it is simple: when you dramatically reduce your caloric intake, your body shifts into a protective, survival mode by slowing your metabolism down so you won’t burn as many calories. This means body holds onto your ugly body fat and burns up your valuable, figure slimming muscle instead.

Why does your body eat up muscle tissue instead of burning fat while you are deducing your calories? Because your muscle is what burns the most calories, and in order to survive, your body cannibalizes what burns the most calories. In other words, drastically reducing your calories will make you fatter!

In the beginning of a diet you will lose weight by dramatically cutting calories, but it won’t be fat loss, it will be water weight and lean muscle tissue – the exact OPPOSITE of what you want to get rid of. Science has proven this over and over again. It’s an undisputed universal fact. Not only will harsh diets slow your metabolism down to a crawl, it will cause your initial weight loss to come to a gradual halt.

The Rebound Effect

These diets will also inevitably bring about a rebound effect. This rebound will make you even fatter than you were before starting the diet. When you rebound, not only do you generally put on more weight than you actually lost with the diet, your percentage of body fat increases because your body cannibalized muscle tissue as an energy source during the dieting process.

This is the “yo-yo” effect that almost all calorie deprived dieter’s experience. I interviewed a past employee of a diet center, and she told me that this diet center’s plan is “Really kind of cruel to people, because they starve you into weight loss by reducing your calories so much.” And the “ultimate 2-day weight loss plan” is the same old deception of the liquid diet. You absolutely must question the motives of a company that puts you on a liquid diet as a solution in 2 days.

What Do You Think?

How do you feel about crash diets? Have you tried one in the past? What were your results?


Kelly Huggins
Exercise Science, B.S.
Owner, Fitness Together