5 REASON why "eating" helps you lose weight

• First, the goal is to lose body fat, not water and muscle. Eating the right amount of food helps to protect your body from losing muscle mass. The slower you lose weight, the greater percentage of body fat loss. The faster you lose, the more you muscle you lose.

• Second, you don't have to starve to maintain your new weight!?Eating helps maintain your metabolism at a higher rate. (Metabolism is the rate at which your body burns calories).?Because lean muscle mass takes more energy to maintain it and fat is much less active (it's like a storage unit for energy), when you preserve lean muscle mass by eating enough food, your body needs more calories to function. This means: a lean, muscular body with less fat (the new you) needs more calories to maintain it weight compared to someone who loses weight rapidly. So now, you don't have to starve to maintain your new weight and you'll be more likely to stay at your goal because you ate! Eating gives you the energy you need to lose weight successfully!
  

• Thirdly, eating enough calories while you lose weight gives you "staying power". It makes sense: it's much harder to stay on a very low calorie diet long enough to lose the weight you want. Being hungry is o.k.. Feeling deprived and starved is not. And, did you know that very low calorie diets are associated with an increase in "binge" eating?
  

• The fourth reason is when you eat enough food, it gives you more energy to burn off the calories through physical activity. Many dieters feel tired all the time because they are trying to eat too few calories. They don't have the energy to get through the day, much less do extra exercise to build lean body mass and burn fat. This happens especially in women who are exercising a lot and cutting calories at the same time - it multiplies the effect of too few calories.
  

• This last reason is quite simple: if you don't eat enough food, you won't get the nutrition you need to stay healthy. One of the two main reasons people want to lose weight is to get healthier and to look better. People who are not eating enough simply don't look well because they aren't as healthy as they need to be. Healthy people have better looking skin, hair and teeth, and overall their higher energy level is much more attractive than someone dragging around. So fast weight loss really doesn't accomplish either the goal of looking or feeling better over the long haul.