There are so many celebrity trainers and so called fitness experts that push these 800 to 900 calories a day diets for extreme weight loss purposes. I’ve even some of these so called fitness experts publish this nonsensical information in paperback books which is absolutely crazy and we have seen this on reality TV shows.
It sounds like it would make sense that the less you eat the more you lose. But there is a certain minimal caloric threshold, that if you go below, will actually make it harder for your body to lose weight. Let me explain so this makes sense to you.
Plenty of case studies and research has shown that when your daily caloric intake is lower than the amount your body needs to function normally that your resting metabolic rate will decrease drastically which in turn makes it difficult to lose weight. Put simply, your body goes into starvation mode when you are consuming a diet less than 1,200 calories.
Additional research has shown the biggest decreases in your resting metabolic rate (RMR), occurs when the daily caloric diets are less than 1200 calories. This temporary metabolic decline comes from the lowering of the thyroid hormone point as well as leading to a serious reduction in lean muscle mass.
Obviously if you increase those calories above 1,200 then your RMR will increase, which will help you lose weight faster for a longer period of time. The metabolic decline is not permanent; it is only temporary but for many people it takes quite some time for their resting metabolic rate to return to normal levels, particularly if they were extreme-dieting for a long period of time.
You have to be conscious that you are eating enough healthy calories within the day if you really want to lose weight. Starving yourself is not going to be the answer to weight loss in fact it is extremely counterproductive. You don’t want to send your body into starvation mode.
The only person that should be prescribing super lower calorie diets are medical doctors that are dealing with candidates that are obese and have weight related medical problems. And even then those medical doctors have to closely monitor the results of those patients on a diet like that.
Other than that it is not advisable to be prescribing those types of diets to anybody as you will do more harm than good. Some of the minor side affects you can experience on a low caloric diet are nausea, fatigue, dizziness, constipation, irregular menstrual cycles and diarrhea, etc. Just imagine how you will feel being on some silly 800 calories a day liquid or detox diet? Gallstones are a major side effect of a super low caloric diet.
Additional symptoms are: You will have minimal to 0 energy; You will be cranky, irritable and experience a significant amount of brain fog. The reason being, you don’t have enough nutrients or calories in your body to allow you to function properly. And you won’t have enough energy to function regularly in any reasonable type of physical activity.
Extreme dieting can lead to so many health issues and it is simply not a sustainable lifestyle. A majority of the people that are on an extreme diet for long periods of time gain the weight back. So with all this information I’ve shared with you is it really worth it?
Click here to view the How Many Calories to Eat a Day Calculator.
