Diet or starvation

 

You may think that starving yourself maximizes your weight loss but it does not.  You could even end up with an eating disorder if you do this regularly.  Nearly 1/3 of teenage girls suffer from anorexia and unfortunately this number is rising.  Starving yourself is dangerous, you only need some changes in your diet and lifestyle to change the way you are.

Everyone makes mistakes when dieting.  All you need to do is make the right decisions.  If you find that you are starving yourself, stop and learn from it.

When starting a low carbohydrate diet you could suffer from constipation, depression, dizziness, headaches, extremely low energy, headaches, insomnia, mood changes, sore throat, nausea/vomiting, stress, and women can even stop menstruating.  It can even It can cause low blood pressure which in turn causes bloodshot eyes.  What you need to do for this is have a good diet and rest your eyes.  Also a helpful tip is to dampen cotton wool pads in warm/hot water and place over your eyes for a time which will improve the look of your eyes.  How to escape all of this is by eating every 2-3 hours.  Leaving it until after 4 hours is too long also making sure you are hydrated drinking little and often.   This will prevent the sugar dip which causes so many problems.

Don’t think that it is easy to lose weight.  Rethink that extreme diet plan.  Looking at a long term goal you will see better results.  Trying to lose small amounts constantly and over a length of time, is better than losing large amounts and not being able to sustain it.   Constant dieters have greater appetites when they come off a diet.

Yo-yo dieting causes problems with your cardiovascular system as well as altering fat tissue.  It also decreases glucose tolerance risking diabetes and heart disease

Some people even train whilst eating a very low calorie amount which is dangerous.  By doing this you can actually end up with muscle loss, injuries & malnutrition.  You need to have the right balance between nutrition/weight loss and training.  Your body requires fuel to perform physical activity which you would get from the foods you eat.

When dieting the first thing you lose is water, this gives you a drop on the weighing scale but will stop once the water has gone.  This causes you to lose motivation.

The next thing you will see is a loss in muscle not fat.  Your body only uses the stored fat as a last resort.

Your metabolic rate decreases which means you will put less effort into everything.  You may feel you are using the same level of workout but this would be impossible to go continue.

By cutting too many calories there will probably be something you are cutting out is exactly what your body needs.

You should instead eat foods that are better for you.  Simple changes like grilling or instead of frying and a leaner cut of meat.  Cutting down on sugar trying to replace this with natural sugars such as honey.  Using milk instead of cream.  Lastly have extra vegetables instead of rice or potatoes.

Simple exercises or even housework cause calorie loss.  Using stairs instead of escalators or lifts.  Walking to work or when getting a bus or train a stop earlier.  Playing with the children.  Small changes do help.

If you consume an extra 500 calories a day, this equates to 3,500 kcals per week.  You will probably put on 1lb/ 0.45kg every week and a massive 3.1/2 stone/23.6kg a year.  It is so easy to pile on the pounds without noticing.  Of course the opposite applies if you eat 500 calories less per day, you will lose the weight.

As calories needed per day depends on the individual, it is hard to determine how many you would need to cut out to cause starvation.  But if you lose more than 3lb per week you obviously are not eating enough.  An 18 stone man would need to consume approximately 19,000 calories every week just for basic energy.  If he were to lose 3lb a week he would need to cut just over 10.000 weekly.  That is less than half of the normal calories on the bordering starvation mode.  The better way would be to reduce your calories by 4.500 weekly and exercise the rest of it away.

Don’t beat yourself up when you see the tabloids or magazines showing people with perfect physiques.  These have more likely than not been altered by air brushing or other internet tools.