There are so many diets out there, some that work, others that just plain insult peoples intelligence. You can however categorise all of them into 3 main simple types that’ll largely help you understand what these diets will do for you. Hypo-caloric, Iso-caloric and Hyper-caloric.
Hypo-caloric
Hypo, a prefix meaning ‘beneath’ or ‘below’, means your calorie count for that day will be lower than what it usually or what it is intended to be. This is obviously a critical factor in losing weight. Unfortunately that weight will come in both fat and muscle. Yet there are ways we can help counter the muscle loss to reduce as much as possible, with the goal for the majority of clients and athletes being to lose that all undesirable fat.
Iso-Caloric
Iso, coming from Greek to mean ‘equal’, is where the calories remain pretty much the same. This is in order to maintain current weight, which is a big requirement for athletes coming nearer to competition time so they don’t creep below or above their necessary weight. This is also useful for clientele who are by in large happy with themselves, where they are at and just want to hold at that level for a period of time.
Hyper-caloric
Hyper, not to be confused with when you have too many skittles but to mean ‘above’ or ‘higher’, is where the calorie count is indeed more than what we would normally require. This is what the majority of male clientele are interested in, getting huge. Muscle does not come out of thin air. The substance required to create that muscle comes from the energy provided by our food, which is why the answer, in 90% of cases, as to why your not getting big is simple. You are not eating enough. Hyper-caloric diets do not just apply themselves to aesthetics driven ventures, in performance based goals the energy required to bust through new PR’s and rep maxes has got to come from somewhere!
There you have it. 3 simple diet classifications to help you understand if the diet you are looking at is right for you!