According to recent research the United States ranks near the top of the heap with people who are considered “overweight” with a staggering 68.9% of adults being classified as “slightly to moderately” overweight and obese. It’s clear that losing weight is a major problem facing a majority of the population. Most people just want to get to a more desirable weight for health reasons alone, but some still asipre to have that “beach body” that they dream about.

Sadly, most people who start on some kind of “diet plan” don’t have a clue what they’re getting themselves into. Before you, or anyone for that matter, get into any specific kind of diet, it’s incredibly important that you understand the machine you’re trying to fix. The human body is an amazingly complex machine but its primary function is to stay alive.

What does that mean to you, the person who wants to lose weight? It means be very careful what you try to do. If you go on crash diets that just deprive your body of valuable nutrients it will only trigger your body’s natural response to a crisis and force it into starvation mode, which actually slows your metabolism and encourages your body to (you guessed it!) store MORE fat!

So what can you do to combat the natural instincts that could take over at a moments notice?

One promising solution is to trick your body to thinking that there’s food in abundance even while you secretly reduce your caloric intake. It’s called “calorie staggering” and its effects are pretty amazing.

Here’s how it works: With an average intake of 2000 calories a day, let’s say you plan on an overall weekly reduction of 4000 calories – rather than cut them out in equal portions every day the idea behind calorie staggering is simple – eat different amounts on different days to fool your body and not allow it to go into starvation mode.

Instead of eating roughly 1,430 calories per day; you will need to mix it up every day. You might eat 2,000 one day, 1,000 the next then 1,500 another day – as long as the total calorie deficit totals 4,000 (or whatever number you set).

By staggering your calorie intake your body is tricked into keeping your body in a constant state of fat burning and in effect enhances your metabolism. Another fantastic benefit is that you won’t feel that you’re being deprived of foods that you might otherwise not be able to eat on any other type of diet. On the higher calorie days, you can indulge a little more giving your body some satisfaction while you lose.

For more information about calorie staggering go here