The theory of eat less and lose more is a general common theme in terms of weight loss. But sometimes people take that eat less theory to the ultimate extreme where they aren’t eating enough food daily and they think for some strange reason their weight will drop dramatically and faster. Starving yourself where you are eating less than 1000 calories or being on some questionable liquid detox diet is not the healthy way to lose weight and it is incredibly counterproductive. Why is this? Because frankly you are depriving your body of the vitamins, minerals and nutrients that are needed to function on daily basis.

Research has shown that diets that are less than 1,200 calories per day will lead to greatest decrease in your Resting Metabolic Rate. So that means that if you are on an extremely severe low caloric diet it becomes increasingly more difficult to lose the weight because during that time your metabolism is much slower. The flip side to this is that if you are eating enough food with the normal daily intake for your body your resting metabolic rate increases.

When your caloric intake is lower than the daily amount needed for your body to function properly then metabolic decline starts to happen which is a because of the decreased Thyroid Hormone Output. What is the Thyroid Hormone Output? The thyroid hormone is a group of metabolically active hormones stored in the thyroid gland. While on an extreme diet you are going to lose lean muscle mass, which affects your ability to burn calories while resting.

If you are on a diet and you don’t know how many calories you are consuming but you are always starving and are always hungry that is your body telling you that you are not eating enough food. That should be a sign for you to increase your daily caloric intake.

Some of the minor and major side effects to extreme dieting are:

  • Nausea
  • Fatigue
  • Constipation
  • Diarrhea
  • GallStones

The only person that should be in a position to prescribe a diet lower than 1000 calories is a medical doctor treating someone that is severely obese. When that medical doctor prescribes a program that is very lower in calories that program is under serious and constant medical supervision.

What does that mean? That means if you are a fitness model, fitness competitor, bodybuilder or trainer you should never be giving a diet program to anybody that is less than 1,200 calories as you are going to hurt people and not help them out.

Severely restricted calories are not a lifestyle nor are sustainable. Trying to lose weight that way will be very difficult to do, you lose weight when you eat high quality balanced healthy foods and are obtaining enough calories in your system to function properly on a daily basis while having the energy to exercise properly.

That means if you are a fitness model, fitness competitor, bodybuilder or trainer you should never be giving out a diet program to anybody that is under 1,200 calories as you are going to hurt them instead of helping them out.  And frankly you don’t have the medical authority or credentials to even be in a position to give such an extreme diet program.