Or, even harder to comprehend, if a person taking these water pills fails to
restore their body’s fluid needs, they can actually suffer dehydration;
which can, and has, led to coma and death.
Myth #2: Drop Caloric Intake
As we discussed earlier in this book (but it’s so important that it deserves
an encore here at the end), trying to lose weight by drastically cutting
down calories doesn’t work; in fact, it’s unhealthy.
The thing to remember is that the body’s ability to lose weight is not
controlled by calories. Calories are the input. The real control
mechanism is that famous concept that you’ve become very familiar with:
metabolism.
Calories are merely units of energy. It’s how your body deals with that
energy that determines whether weight is gained or lost.
So with that being said, cutting down your caloric intake to, say, 1000
calories a day isn’t necessarily going to help you lose weight; because it
doesn’t necessarily change your metabolism.
Indeed, as you know, if you slow down your caloric intake, your body –
which is always trying to help you in the best way that it knows how – will
slow down its metabolism.
Really, it makes sense: the body says that something has gone wrong;
instead of the 2000 calories that it needs, it’s only getting 1000. The body