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The short and sweet conclusion I promised? Drastic diets or diets without exercise chew through muscle. Less muscle means lower BMR and more relative bodyfat. Lower BMR means eventually putting on additional bodyfat in the long run. It puts your hormones out of whack and disrupts your appetite and eating patterns. Essentially your whole metabolic environment is screwed up.

It also means that short-term, drastic caloric restriction is not a good solution for long term weight maintenance and bodyfat loss.

And that goes for the lowfat mania of the late 1980s and 1990s. Lowering fat seemed like a simple equation: no fat in, no fat on the body. Well, it doesn’t work out that way. In fact, your body needs fat, and the right kind of fat can actually help you lose bodyfat. It sounds crazy, but it’s true. I used to be a devoted Dr. Ornish fan (it didn’t seem to occur to me that I was still heavy while eating nearly no fat at all) , and I thought it was nutty when I first heard about it too. But the more research I did, the more I became convinced that the nutrition gurus were on to something. You can read more about good fats here. During the lowfat hysteria, all kinds of fat-free products were put on the market, and people took that to mean that fat-free meant healthy. What people didn’t realize is that the processed sugars and starches in these so-called healthy products were the real culprits. In another article I discuss the role of simple carbohydrates (sugars and starches) in bodyfat deposition, and explain why it’s likely not the fat in your diet, but rather the carbs in your diet that are the problem.

Now that I’ve depressed everyone, let me tell you what DOES work. What does work is mild, long-term caloric restriction, and the proper combination of macronutrients (fat, carbohydrates, and protein), combined with weight training and cardiovascular exercise. See Dieting 101 for more on this. While it is simple once you understand the basics, it’s not a quick fix. If you are overfat, it likely took you a long time to get there, so it will take a while to reduce bodyfat and gain muscle. But that’s OK. Small, slow changes are lasting changes. What you must make is a commitment to your body and to a change in lifestyle. And you have to do it yourself.