The Zig Zag Diet
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We live in some crazy times! It seems like every day somebody had discovered the secret to weight loss. Either it’s some new eating plan or it’s a magic pill that is purported to melt the pounds away. While most of these are just fads that simply do not work in the long term, a few of them have merit. We are going to cover a method of losing weight that actually works, the Zig Zag diet. The best part of this eating plan is it requires no special food or cutting of certain types of calories!
Whenever one of these new plans comes out there is usually a simple premise to it. If you burn more calories than you consume in a day you will lose weight. Admittedly, certain types of food have more of an effect on weight loss than others but the premise stays the same. Here is where the problem arises, if you try and use calorie restriction as a weight loss method you are setting yourself up for a trap. The body is pretty smart from a survival stand point. If you cut calories for too long the body will respond by slowing down it’s metabolism. This is a survival mechanism in our genetics from the time when our ancestors had to survive times of famine.
You have heard this story before or it has even happened to you. In an effort to lose weight you cut calories. After a while your weight loss comes to a halt and you are so hungry that you could literally eat everything in your pantry! The worst part is that once you start eating the amount of calories that you did previously, you wind up weighing more than you did when you started. This is due to the fact that the body is confused and was still running on the metabolic rate it reset when you cut calories. Talk about demoralizing! So how do you take advantage of calorie restriction while not setting yourself up for disaster? Welcome to the world of Zig Zag.
By now you are probably starting to figure out where this is going. There is going to be some Zig Zagging of calories or calorie shifting as it is sometimes called. Here is why this works. Previously we discussed that if you cut calories for too long your metabolism slows down. By using the Zig Zag method you can cut calories and prevent that slow down in metabolic rate. There are a couple of ways to this but here at Prosyn Nutrition we prefer the three day cycle. This is how it would work: Monday – Highest calorie day, Tuesday – lowest calorie day, Wednesday – mid calorie day and repeat the cycle gain and again. The way this is working goes like this.
On your highest calorie day you are telling your body that there will be food around and it sets your metabolism very high. On the very next day you take your calories to their lowest point. When you do this your body still is operating at a very high level so you burn off fat to meet the demand of the metabolic rate. If you continued this calorie restriction your metabolism would start to slow, so on the third day you up the calories a bit. This tells the body that everything is fine so it will still burn fat and then you repeat the cycle. By now you can see how this works but you are probably asking how this is cutting calories? Let’s do the math with an example of an 1800 calorie/day eating plan:
Normal diet:
- Monday 1800 cal.
- Tuesday 1800 cal.
- Wednesday 1800 cal.
- Total calories for three days: 5400 cal.
Zig Zag diet:
- Monday: 1800 cal.
- Tuesday: 1400 cal.
- Wednesday: 1600 cal.
- Total calories for three days: 4800 cal.
See the magic! In a three day period using the Zig Zag method you have consumed 600 less calories in a three day period. In addition you were able to take two days down below your Basal Metabolic Rate while preventing your metabolism form slowing down! So how do you get started? Follow the calorie calculator below and start Zig Zagging!
Basal Metabolic Rate (calories needed to run normal body functions) = Current body weight x 10
Daily Activity Calories ( calories required for all your daily activities apart from exercise) = B.M.R. x.20
Additional Calories ( extra calories ONLY needed if you are currently exercising on a regular basis) = B.M.R. + D.A.C. + 600 cal.
To execute the Zig Zag, start your highest day at a calorie rate that is the end result of the calculations above. Subtract 400 calories for your lowest day. Subtract 200 calories for your mid calorie day. Good luck!
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