Whether it’s to get into skinny jeans in time for your birthday, or you want to reduce your cellulite, many of us use a weight loss diet to help us reach the goal. In theory, weight loss diets make sense. Watch what you eat, count calories and make sure you burn more of them than you eat. It makes perfect sense. Burn more calories than you eat and you are sure to lose weight, right? Wrong. For the vast majority of weight loss diets, the theory doesn’t work in action. When going on a diet, we tend to forget that we are dealing with something that is far more amazing and complex than anything we ever even imagined. The Human Body. Your body has powerful mechanisms to help ensure its survival – to keep you alive. To do so, it demands a minimum amount of energy every day. If the energy it gets is below that minimum, it kicks into a mode where it uses less energy to compensate. Too often, we think of calories as “fat”. But calories aren’t really anything. They are a unit of measure we use to express how much energy is in a certain food. Yes, when we eat too many calories, instead of getting rid of the excess energy, your body converts it into fat, in case it needs the energy later on when you don’t get enough calories. When you cut calories below the minimum level your body needs every day, it slows down your metabolism so you use less energy. In certain cases, your body can reduce the number of calories it needs per day to a level that is less than what you are eating even on your calorie-reduced diet. That means you could be putting on weight even while you diet.

Think About Your Body First

Instead of focusing on calories and pounds, which rarely works, focus on what your body needs. The more nutrients you give it in the foods you eat, the more good energy it has and the better able it is to support your weight loss efforts - and the cellulite reduction that goes with it.