Proof Low Calorie Diets Don't Work

It's hard to lose weight by simply restricting calories. Eating less and losing excess body fat do not automatically go hand in hand.

Low-calorie, high-carbohydrate diets generate a series of biochemical signals in your body that will take you out of the balance, making it more difficult to access stored body fat for energy. 

Result: you'll reach a weight-loss plateau, beyond which you simply can't lose any more weight.

"For the first time in humans, we are finding out that cutting your calories increases cortisol," said lead researcher A. Janet Tomiyama, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholar at the University of California, San Francisco.

"We think this may be one reason dieters tend to have a hard time keeping weight off in the long-term," she said. 

 Diets based on choice restriction and calorie limits usually fail. 

People on restrictive diets get tired of feeling hungry and deprived. They go off their diets, put the weight back on (primarily as increased body fat), and then feel bad about themselves for not having enough will power, discipline, or motivation.

Weight loss has little to do with will power. 

You need information, not will power. If you change what you eat, you don't have to be overly concerned about how much you eat. 

Adhering to the right way of eating, you can eat enough to feel satisfied and still lose fat - without obsessively counting calories or fat grams.