Your body needs food for energy. If you are starving yourself to lose weight, your body will be lacking in the energy it needs. At that point your body will find other ways of getting that energy. In a perfect world, your body would start burning fat for energy, although, this not the case for most individuals consuming the average Indian diet.
When you skip meals, your body will start to store fat and burn muscle for energy. The body does this because it’s not sure when the next meal will come. This goes back to our hunter-gatherer ancestors who had to store fat because of their inconsistent eating habits.
It may seem counter intuitive that not eating will actually cause you to gain weight over time. This is because skipping meals not only tells your body to store fat but it also slows your metabolism. If you want to put your body in a fat burning state, you actually need to eat often and consistently. Eating 5 small meals throughout the day causes your body to burn fat faster as well as increasing your metabolism. This is due to the body knowing that another meal is coming soon, so it is more willing to let go of any excess rather than storing it for a rainy day.
With starvation diets, you eat less than the minimum number of calories your body needs to function properly. It doesn’t matter if you eat 400 or 1,000 calories a day – if you don’t meet the minimum, you’re starving your body. Below are some the effects your body undergoes when you go into starvation mode:
MetabolismYour body needs a minimum number of calories to function properly. Cutting down your caloric intake to very low numbers, will slow your body down. This is basic survival instinct; your body will try to burn fewer calories to prevent you from really starving, so starvation diets actually slow down your weight loss.
Water LossMost starvation diets focus on just fruits and vegetables, juices or soups. This means you’ll be giving up grains and most processed foods, which can be high in sodium. Because carbohydrates and salt retain water, you’re likely to see a big drop on your weight after just a few days on a starvation diet. However, this is not a real loss. Instead, you’re simply losing water weight. Once you go back to eating solids and drinking normal amounts of liquids, you’re likely to regain all your weight back.
HungerOne of the reasons starvation diets don’t work is that they’re basically impossible to keep up. The longer you starve your body, the hungrier you will get. If you’re avoiding carbs, your blood sugar might plummet, causing you to crave sugars in the form of sweets or other carbs. While you might stay on this type of diet for a few days, you will eventually go back to whole foods. Not only that, but you’re likely to overeat to compensate for the missed days. If you give in to your cravings, you might end up eating more junk food than you normally would, only because your body is desperate for a quick boost of energy.
Muscle LossIf you don’t eat enough calories, your body will look for fuel somewhere else. Fat is a poor source of energy, so your body will first look at your muscles for the fuel needed to produce glucose. If you starve yourself for a long period of time, you will start to lose muscle mass. Muscle keeps your metabolism running efficiently. The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn doing any activity. As you lose muscle, your metabolism will slow down and so will your weight loss.
To conclude, starving yourself to lose weight does more harm to your body than good. Eating small meals at regular intervals helps to burn more fat as well as increase your metabolism. While exercising on a daily basis will help you gain muscles. Hence, you can get in touch with our online diet & nutrition experts to get advice on what your needs if your trying to lose / gain weight at eahomecare.in/diet-and-nutrition and you can join in some great fitness sessions with our fitness experts at home at eahomecare.in/fitness