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clarify this point. The lady is 45 years old and is 64 inches tall and weighs 170 pounds. Let's say that she starts out with a body composition of 65% lean body mass and 35% body fat. Average fat for a woman is 16-25%. She currently eats about 1750 calories per day and she is not gaining weight with this calorie level. She wants to lose 45 pounds to reach her goal weight of 125 pounds. She can go two ways:
A. She can choose a 500- to 800-calorie (starvation levels of calorie intake), very low carbohydrate diet and lose 45 pounds in less than 4 months. After losing the weight, 49 per cent of her body is now fat tissue and 51 per cent is lean tissue. Because of the relative distribution of fat versus lean tissue, she will now have to restrict her post-goal eating to no more than 1553 calories per day to stay at her 125 pounds. Eating any more than that will cause her to progressively regain her weight and, typically, even more. At that calorie level, she will be "dieting" forever.
B. She can choose a 1200-calorie diet with mild-to-moderate daily exercise - burning 200 to 300 calories daily through exercise. With this program, she will lose 45 pounds in 5-6 months. At her goal weight of 125 pounds, she will now have 25 per cent body fat and 75 per cent lean tissue. Since she has more metabolically-active lean body tissue at her goal weight than before she started exercise and weight loss, she can now eat 2035 calories per day and still maintain her goal weight.
Which program makes more sense to you? The never-ending cycle you are probably already on, if this is not your first attempt at weight loss, brought about by over-restrictive dieting and lack of exercise? As you have seen, this type of weight loss is doomed to failure because of the results of this kind of "crash" diet to your body composition. Or the second choice which allows you to lose weight and then keep it off without lifelong starvation?
The first program in this comparison - the "crash," starvation, "30 pounds in 30 days," or ketogenic (or any of another hundred terms) diet for diets of less than 1000 calories - predictably results in usually rapid weight loss. But, since the diet is too strict and the patient is not exercising during the weight loss, the tissue lost is 68 per cent lean (muscle) tis
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