Why zig zag diet

Essentially, the zig-zag diet is all about portion control and alternating consumption of different types of foods. The idea behind this rotation or zig-zag in the task of dieting is understood to trick the metabolism into using stored fat for energy while tending to not convert muscle for the daily needs of the body. The point of a zig-zag diet is to maintain some balance between the need to lose fat by watching the calorie intake and the desire to gain muscle by consuming a wide range of foods that may in fact contain a lot of calories.

Most diets are geared toward losing fat, but consider losing muscle as one of the necessary casualties of the process. And will it help me add more lean muscle? Many people who use it report experiencing greater overall fat loss, with less frequent weight or fat loss plateaus. It also may encourage the preservation of lean muscle mass, which is always at risk during when you restrict calories to encourage loss of body fat.

Although clinical research on the effectiveness of calorie cycling versus traditional dieting methods that utilize sustained calorie deficits is sparse, people who try it anecdotally-report good results. However, this is an advanced fat loss technique that requires a fair amount of self-discipline to follow, as well as a willingness to measure food and count calories with a great deal of precision.

Losing body fat requires forcing your body into tapping your long-term stores of energy, which are packed on in subcutaneous fat the fat below your skin.

The only way to do this is to put yourself in a calorie-deficit. Eat more calories than your body needs, and it will start to store the excess energy as body fat.

Eat just the right amount of food, and your weight will stay the same. There are two challenges, however, whenever you reduce your calories below your maintenance level for any extended period of time: catabolism and homeostasis. It also burns carbohydrates, and sometimes protein in the form of lean tissue.

So this means that even though you are losing scale weight and body fat, you may also be losing muscle along with it. Muscle, unlike body fat, is metabolically-active — meaning it requires energy even at rest — so you always want to maximize it whenever possible. However, whenever you are in a calorie-deficit for any extended period of time, you will generally lose some muscle along with the fat.

This response is programmed into your genes from millions of years of human evolution, and is intended to help you survive in a famine. As you decrease your calories, hormones are produced that regulate metabolism and lipid oxidation fat burning , literally slowing down how much energy your body burns.

These hormones such as the stress hormone cortisol present a dilemma for people who are trying to lose body fat while also preserving muscle. Cortisol is catabolic and encourages the breakdown of lean tissue. It also tells the body to actually hold on to fat stores or even increase them when it has a chance.

This is not a situation that will help you get lean. This is why people will experience fairly dramatic weight or fat loss when first beginning a diet, but then hit a wall within a few weeks, as fat loss slows.

But the other reason is that your brain has started to slow your metabolism down as a response to the reduction in food. Even better, because you alternating higher calorie days with lower calorie days, you may be less likely to lose lean tissue and less prone to developing fat loss plateaus.

You want to be energized, but not hungry and not stuffed. In other words, once you get it down, you should be getting results while feeling great.

Sounds like a good plan to me! The bigger and more active you are, the higher number of calories you should add or subtract. Most people will stay in the to calorie range.

For the most part, calorie cycling is fine over long periods of time. Also, your body can also get wise to the tactic and resume your plateau. Even mild weight training will result in muscular growth. Bigger muscles burn more calories than smaller ones. They also look better.

Note that "reversing the effects of disuse" means just that. It does not necessarily mean becoming huge or looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger! There are many excellent systems of weight training. Perhaps the best one for beginners interested in getting rid of unwanted fat and improving general tone and fitness is the "circuit training" system. The great thing about this system is that you needn't belong to a gym or club to do it! You can easily perform this system of resistance training in your home.

The main objective of circuit training is completing all of the "stations" in the circuit in decreased time. Each station consists of one weight training exercise per body part. Common misuse of the term "cross-training" has limited its definition to aerobic-type activities e. This is not cross-training in the scientific sense of the term. So, let's set the record straight once and for all. Glycolytic training involves pushing your anaerobic threshold with such activities as running meters for time, forcing those last four or five reps out of each set in weight training, or playing an extremely fast-paced game of racquetball.

And, aerobic training involves pushing your oxidative capacity to the limit through high intensity long-distance running, swimming or cycling. For general fitness, it's great. It'll provide a good level of fitness across the anaerobic-aerobic continuum. For elite athletes, well, stick to your sport's requirements and you'll do much better. Athletes must convert their bodies into highly specialized "machines" that are capable of performing their sport to the utmost limits of human tolerances.

All serious athletes must specialize! Their subcutaneous fat levels, however, remain extremely low in order to show "cuts" muscular definition. Hatfield a. Squat , won the world championships three times in the sport of powerlifting, and at age 45 performed a competitive squat with pound at a body weight of pounds. Learn from the best in the industry! According to the same conventional wisdom, fat loss can only be accomplished three ways: With aerobic exercise Through reduced caloric intake Through a combination of the two There are many ways that fat can be shed.

Almost all of the weight loss strategies used thus far fall into the following categories: Medical drugs therapies Psychological strategies Nutritional supplements Food diet manipulation Surgical techniques Exercise techniques Calorie restriction Various therapeutic modalities The truth be known: NONE has worked on a permanent basis.

The answer lies in taking an integrated approach, with each element uniquely matched to your specific situation: The answer lies in taking an integrated approach: Genetic hereditary factors Your unique biochemistry Your current state of health The environment you live in Your current level of fitness Personal lifestyle considerations Your medical history Your unique metabolism Your financial status Your tastes in foods Your unique psychology These are the ever-changing elements which in large part determine the permanency and effectiveness of your fat loss efforts.

What Causes Obesity? The Zigzag Diet Plan Okay. Here it is: You can't lose fat unless you're on a negative calorie balance diet. You can't gain muscle tissue unless you're on a positive calorie balanced diet.

You can't lose fat and gain muscle unless you alternate periods of negative calorie balance with periods of positive calorie balance. It doesn't matter if you're trying to lose total body weight, stay at the same total body weight or gain total body weight. The zigzag rule applies to everyone. All the time. There are five rules to the process, and they apply to everryone on Mother Earth, from cradle to grave: The 5 Rules Rule 1 Always eat at least 5 meals a day preferably 6 or 7.

Rule 2 Remember the rule. Rule 3 When you sit down to eat, ask yourself, "What am I going to be doing for the next three hours of my life? Rule 4 Another thing to remember whether you're trying to lose fat or adding lean muscle is to "zigzag" your caloric intake. Rule 5 Your reduced intake of calories makes it almost impossible to get all of the nutrients your body needs to remain healthy and active. Also, no matter how hard you try, no matter how good of a cook you are, or where you buy your food: Why Supplement?

You can't always eat 5 or 6 times daily; There are many instances where your body either requires or can make good use of certain nutrients in greater amounts than what can be derived from Mother Nature alone; A perfectly balanced diet cannot be maintained during periods of contest preparation or periods where there is a purposeful caloric restriction imposed; Periods of high-stress training require super normal intake of many nutrients without a commensurable increase in caloric need; Periods of high-stress training creates a situation in which various benefits can be derived from nutritional substances not normally found in food or biosynthesized in the body in sufficient or significant quantities but which are either man made or derived from botanical sources; Soil depletion, toxins in the food chain, overprocessing, overcooking, free radical formation in the body, and a host of other sometimes medically related factors all interact to make food less than totally nutritious.

Because man has been able to improve on Mother Nature's original work in many of life's arenas, there are some "superfoods" available which are plain and simply BETTER than the normal diet for serious fitness training. So, you MUST use nutritional supplements!