If you have been on any typical fat loss diet for any length of time, you are probably rather good at counting your calories within your foods already! Many fat loss diet programs give you a certain amount of calories you should take for the day. These diets also usually have a whole list of exact foods you should eat.

Although it seems like counting calories sound like a perfectly logical method to lose weight, new research has shown that this is not necessarily the case. Our bodies react in different ways to different foods.

Each calorie is not created equal. You can take in the same amount of calories from French fries or spinach, but your body will absorb and digest them different. This is because your body processes foods with same calorie content but different nutritional content differently.

The way that your body does this is programmed by your DNA. You should know that our body's greatest priority is to keep us alive. Our genes are still operating the same way thousands of years ago, and works in a way so as to protect you from any chances of a famine!

This means that restricting your calories will definitely cause your body to enter panic mode and go into fat accumulation mode. When you significantly reduce the amount of calories your body takes in, your body will think that it is starving, and will automatically go into survival mode to protect you! It does this by slowing down your metabolic rate accordingly, so as to expend as little energy and food calories as possible. This causes you to accumulate fats faster.

Also, when you constantly and significantly reduce your calorie intake levels, your taste buds will also start to crave salty and sweet foods more often! Salty foods will tend to retain water, causing water retention effect and giving you a bloated and chubby look. Sweet foods will cause your blood sugar level and insulin to spike, and subsequently your metabolism rate will become even slower than it already is.

The real and proper way to lose weight permanently and effectively is to understand how nutrition and your body work. Simply blindly following a random diet online or in fitness magazines will not work; especially if it is not customized to your body type!

Therefore, restricting your calorie intake levels and counting calories every day is definitely not a long term solution to fat loss.

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