What Is Calorie Shifting?

If you have been studying diets for weight loss, it's possible you have run across the principle of calorie shifting. This is an idea that involves calorie shifting by changing food types to "trick" your metabolism. It works on the premise that on a weight loss diet, you may plateau and that is because your metabolism has shifted to sustain yourself on fewer calories, or fewer calories of a certain type.

Once the metabolism starts burning more calories than it takes in, it has to reach into the fat cell storage bank, and the metabolism tries to sustain itself on fewer calories, or less fat and sugars, which it uses for energy. On some diets, you may feel more energy, and others you may feel more tired. That is the metabolism shifting to adjust to what calories it is taking in, so it is conserving energy, so to speak.

To get an idea of how calorie shifting can fool your metabolism in a weight loss diet, one of the best examples to use is the Atkins diet or a low carbohydrate diet. These are proven weight loss diets that cause weight loss by cutting out carbohydrates, which the body metabolizes into sugar and puts in the fat storage.

By cutting out carbohydrates, starches and sugars and only feeding the body protein, vitamins and minerals, your body will use the protein to go towards muscle instead of fat, and you will lose weight. Then your weight plateaus, even though you are eating the same things. Your metabolism has adjusted to this diet day after day, and knowing that is the only calories you will be taking in.

When this happens, many people on these diets will tell you they eat pizza and all the carbohydrates they can for two or three days and then go back on the diet, and they start losing weight again. The reason for this is calorie shifting. After two or three days, the metabolism adjusts to thinking the "famine" state is over and it is going to get pizza or carbohydrates regularly, like it has been for the past few days, and it starts processing and burning calories based on this assumption.

This is an exaggerated example of explaining calorie shifting, but makes it clear to understand. On any weight loss diet, where you are taking in fewer calories than you burn, the body may adjust to the calorie intake, and even though you are eating less, you are not losing weight.

By calorie shifting, it confuses the metabolism, so the ideal way to implement calorie shifting is by eating healthy foods that provide nutrients, and metabolism boosting foods such as cabbage, broccoli, celery, onion, and tomatoes that actually cause you to burn more calories than they contain. These are the ingredients found in the cabbage soup diet or fat-burning soup diet, and they can be supplemented with lean meats and other fruits and vegetables.

If your metabolism hits a plateau, then shift the type of food you are eating for two or three days, then shift food types again. There are calorie shifting diets that cause you to lose weight by just shifting calories every two or three days, and burning more calories than you take in, to lose weight.

Seed Newsvine

Bookmark this article in your preferred program

Comments

Add Comment

Popular Articles in this cathegory

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.