Dieting? For many people, dieting causes weight gain. That’s right—weight gain. When you diet, your body becomes more fuel efficient and your metabolic rate declines. As a result, even more dieting or exercise is required in order to reduce excess weight. During this cycle, your weight loss slows, and you regain weight three times faster. Eventually, your body will maintain weight on a low-calorie diet that actually makes it harder for you to lose weight and easier for you to regain it. How does this happen? When you diet, your body uses protein for energy, which means that you lose muscle protein with each dieting cycle. And when you lose muscle—the furnace that burns excess calories—you reduce your capacity to burn calories, regardless of whether you are at rest or doing exercise. Thus, each time you diet to lose weight, you lose lean tissue and must therefore decrease your caloric intake in order to avoid subsequent weight gain. If you return to your former eating habits, you increase your weight and fat above previous levels. As a result, the only way to minimize the loss of lean tissue while dieting is to exercise. In fact, if you do enough exercise, you can reverse the drop in your metabolic rate and increase your lean tissue, thereby easing the problem of weight control. The Diet–Weight Gain Cycle
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• Lose muscle • Regain weight from fat
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• Lose weight from lean muscle and fat • Metabolic rate slows down • Fat storage increases
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First diet
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Second diet
Third diet
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