Here is something that may surprise you - in how to lose weight, calories are not all that is important! It is very true that reducing the calories you eat per day will help you shed those extra pounds, but there is more to it. You do not only want to lose weight, you want to lose fat and that is where the difference comes in.

The problem with eating too little:

1. Fast weight loss is not always fat loss. Very often most of the pounds you drop are mostly water and if you eat too little even muscle. Yes, you can lose those precious muscles if you are not careful. This makes things worse for you as muscle burns more energy than fat. Now it stands to reason that you want to build muscle, not burn it. Muscle is your friend here; it speeds up your metabolism and speeds up the slimming process. You do not want to lose muscle!

2. If you eat too little, your body goes into starvation mode and that also makes your metabolism slows down. Your body thinks you are in a famine and it tries to conserve energy for the vital organs by slowing down your metabolism. This in turn makes slimming more and more difficult. You do not want your metabolism to slow down!

3. Another very important problem with eating too little is, you cannot exercise. You will find that many of the fad diets discourage you to do any exercise. The reason for this is that the eating plan contains too little energy giving food to allow you to eat. A diet does not have to insist on you exercising it must just not discourage it. Moderate exercise is always part of a healthy weight loss plan.

So, if in "how to lose weight," calories are not all there is, what then?

For true fat loss you have to eat enough to keep your body's fat burning hormones going. You have to prevent your body from going into "Starvation Mode" at all costs. Fortunately you can use a program that shows you how to do "calorie shifting" which keeps your body, so to say, "in the dark" and prevents it from going into starvation mode. Your body never knows how many calories you are going to eat on a specific day and keeps happily burning those excess pounds.