Tuesday, February 23, 2010

I think I'll just starve myself instead.

NO.

Look, I used to eat 800 calories a day for a month straight. On top of that, I still worked out and everything. It's appealing at first, and it makes sense to people who don't understand how the body works, but I'll tell you why this is a bad idea.

1.) Your metabolism - everyone's metabolism is different. Everyone has a certain number of calories they can eat where they won't gain or lose weight. This number is your threshold of calories. Let's pretend your threshold is 2,000 calories. If you decide to eat 800 calories a day for an extended period of time, then your body will adjust to this abrupt change. It will basically say, "Oh man, I'm getting way too few calories. I'm going to adjust my metabolism so I can better process 800 calories." In order to adjust, your body lowers its threshold. What this means is your threshold has dropped from 2,000 to 1,200 (for argument's sake). So now after you lose your weight and you return to a normal diet, your body won't be able to take the sudden surge of calories it has been deprived of. The first month (or more) of eating will be serious weight gain. You know how they say calorie-depriving diets don't work? They don't.

2.) Your muscle - our bodies are tuned according to evolutionary needs. Our bodies will change its mechanisms according to different variables. If you eat food, then your body is happy. If you don't eat food, your body is sad. The problem with this is when your body is sad, it will eat muscle and NOT fat. What does this mean? It means if you starve yourself, then your body will lose dramatic weight, but it will keep all the flubbery stuff. When your body thinks it is going to go long periods of time without food, then it preserves stored fat as stored fat is more valuable for survival. So will you lose weight? Absolutely. But you're still going to have that "jelly-like" fat around your belly.

Eat correctly, exercise. No way around this. Sorry :[

2 comments:

  1. Sorry but I don't agree with the "starving mode" that your body will retain fat if you starve or eat very little. That is also what I learned years ago from some fitness experts. But now I realized it is not true.
    Based on the experiments, starving mode takes a lot of time, it doesn't happen if you skip meals for 3 hours. It just doesn't happen that way.
    People who suffer from Anorexia eat very little or even nothing at all and they get very thin. How do you explain that?
    So if you let them eat like say 6 times a day they will get thinner instead of gaining weight?
    Think about it mate....
    I suggest you read more about Brad Pilon.....

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  2. Is there a way I could contact you? I really need help. I've been trying to lose weight since October and I gained a lot of weight instead :(

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