Weight Loss: How Calorie Shift Diet Plans Work

Calorie shifting is a weight loss strategy designed to combat the natural slowdown that occurs in your metabolism whenever you restrict your calorie intake. One of the reasons we get stuck on our diets (unable to lose pounds for weeks and sometimes months) is because your body is designed to preserve its fat stores and whenever those fat stores are threatened, your metabolism slows down to compensate.

Our body has not yet caught up with the 21st century and the fact that we are mostly sedentary, not chasing our food to the ground, and living in heated houses instead of cold, drafty caves. Most of us don’t want or need this extra fat. We’re trying to get rid of it and it would be nice if nature would cooperate a bit more, but we clearly have ways around it. Calorie shifting is one of them.

Calorie shifting basically prevents your metabolism from becoming complacent. So instead of going on, say, a 1200 calorie diet for months on end, you’re giving your system a shock so your metabolism doesn’t expect the same thing every day. You could eat 1,200 calories a day for six days and then on the seventh day eat 3,000. Another method would be to eat 1,000 calories one day, 1,400 the next day, 1,200, 1,800, etc. Or if you were on a very low-carb plan, instead of changing your calorie count, you could increase your carb intake a few times a month.

Some diet plans suggest zigzag carb/protein ratios so that you only eat low carb for a few days before going back to a high carb day, but keep in mind that much of the reason diet plans low carb actually works because your body goes into ketosis after several days of low carbs and this helps prevent hunger. If you zigzag every other day, you will never get into ketosis. You may find this works well for you, but it’s something to keep in mind as you figure out the best way for your body to lose weight.