Weight control diets can be both good and bad, depending on what you eat and how much you exercise. Most weight control diets require that you restrict your calorie intake to about a thousand or less calories per day.

Your body goes into starvation mode because it feels like you're in a famine when you restrict your calories this way. As a result, your body starts preparing for the next "famine" by holding on to every calorie it can. So, when you cheat on your diet or go back to eating regular food, you begin to gain a lot of weight.

This is basically why many weight control diets don't work. You gain any lost weight back very quickly, often gaining more weight than you lose.

Since your body doesn't like to starve, it's always a good idea to create only a very slight calorie deficit instead of cutting back on a thousand calories or less per day.

First you need to calculate the number of calories that your body needs everyday to maintain its current weight. The Harris-Benedict Formula and The Katch-McArdle Formula are the two formulae that can be used to calculate your daily caloric requirement. (You can get more info from a simple Google search)

Once you are aware of your daily caloric requirement, simply reduce 15% to 20% from it so as to find your calorie intake for weight loss.

Reducing your calorie intake by such a small amount will not make you prone to putting back on any weight that you lose, because it won't trigger a starvation response.

There are weight control diets that are designed for crash dieting, such as "cabbage soup diets" and "celery and cream cheese diets." These often require that you eat only one or two kinds of foods.

It doesn't take a doctorate in biology to realize that these diets are just plain wrong. While you do lose some weight in the beginning, such weight control diets deny your body the necessary nutrition. The worst part is that you gain all the lost weight and some more when you get off the diet because your body is in starvation mode.

The best weight control diets incorporate both a healthy diet and plenty of exercise. It's this magic combination that makes such diets good weight control diets. Exercise makes your body effectively and quickly burn calories because it further increases your metabolic rate.

Moreover, the protein required to build lean muscle is also provided by such diets. You start to burn calories faster than you would otherwise as the increase in muscle mass raises your metabolic rate. The slight daily calorie reduction doesn't counteract the elevated metabolic rate, so you really burn calories in a way that allows you to lose weight in a healthy manner.

There are hundreds of books on weight control diets, many of which strictly set a limit on the amount of calories you consume, or make you eat combinations of foods that are unusual. These diets just don't work.

For more information on weight control diets that can help you burn fat in a healthy manner, check out the link below…