Understanding Starvation Diets

Most people believe that in order to lose weight, you have to starve. It’s no wonder then that starvation low this, low that diets are so widespread and actually mainstream. The truth is that starvation diets never work in the long term. In this article we will try to see why.

First of all, which diet is starvation diet? Any diet that suggests eating very small portions of food with very little calories. These diets are based on the idea that burning more calories than you consume will results in weight loss. This idea is, of course, basically correct, but because of how our bodies work, they won’t produce long term results.

Lets take a look at some statistics. Today, more than one third of American adults are not just overweight, but obese. They do try to lose weight, but more than 95% of them fail. Traditional low fat, low calorie, and low carb diets can in fact produce negative results. Well above 90% of people actually regains weight after using these diets.

In order to understand why this happens, we must take a look at how our bodies cope with extreme calorie deficits that traditional diets impose. You may think you’re being smart to starve in order to lose weight, but your body is smarter than you. It has mechanisms that allow it to survive on very little energy when you are starving. We say that the body goes into a so called starvation mode.

Starvation mode is a response to a decreased calorie intake. It lowers your metabolic rate, giving you the ability to more efficiently store energy on less food. In other words, every last scrap of energy (calories) that is not burned, will be stored and made available for later use. So now you have a talent to get fatter on less food. Not very productive weight loss technique.

Another major problem is that as soon as you go of the diet and begin eating normally again, you will start gaining weight faster that you thought is possible. Your body is still accustomed to preserve fuel. Usually, people gain back more weight that they originally lost.

Starvation diets are not only counterproductive, they are also harmful to your health. There are much better solutions to lose weight. The bottom line, starvation should not be a part of dieting.

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