If you are like most women, the first thought that popped into your head was 'I'll diet it all away.' Certainly there is no shortage of diets to choose from. Many of them work - the scale certainly moves rapidly.
There is just one problem. Make sure you read this story about Sally until the end to learn all about it. Sally went on a diet, the scale is reading 10 pounds less, but the mirror disagrees. What happened? She lost *weight*.
What she really wanted to do is lose fat, but instead she lost weight. I'd like to help you avoid this mistake, so let me explain the difference!
How you look depend primarily on two tissues - fat and muscle.
Muscle makes men look hunky and women look foxy (not bulky). We all have and need some fat on our bodies, but excessive fat makes both men and women look, well...FAT.
What's excessive for one person is perfectly normal for another. 30 pounds of fat on a 200 pound man? Hunky! 30 pounds of fat on a 100 pound female? Twelve weeks away from foxy. It is the proportion of fat to muscle that matters.
So what happened when Sally went on a diet? She lost a lot of muscle and a little bit of fat. At the end of the diet she looked worse than when she started.
When you reduce calories (go on a diet), your body has to either burn fat or burn muscle to compensate. Your body will choose muscle every time, unless you give it a good reason to keep it.
There is only way to tell you body to keep muscle - use it! This means that you MUST do proper weight training.
Muscle has other really cool benefits too. For instance, it burns calories round the clock, even when you sleep. This helps you get rid of fat faster, or simply eat a bit more without getting fat.
The point is going on a diet without proper weight training will make you look worse. Don't do it! Oh, and doing hour long cardio sessions make the situation even worse!
Your best bet is not to diet at all and just eat nutritious foods in reasonable quantities. But if you must get in shape FAST, you will have to diet. If you must go this route, make absolutely certain that you are performing a well-designed weight training program.
