Trying to lose weight quickly can sometimes lead to extreme diet choices. The 500 calorie diet is considered an extreme diet because there are health risks involved when going on this particular diet. You need to decide now if you’re willing to take on this risk when opting for this choice.
What makes this diet so risky is that a normal person needs a lot more calories than 500, during the average day, in order for the body to function properly. The average woman needs between 1200 – 1300 calories, and the average man needs between 1500 – 1600 calories per day. So, when you’re planning on taking in only 500 calories, that’s less than half the nutritional amount that your body needs.
Yet, many people attempt this diet thinking that it will force their bodies to quickly drop pounds. Unfortunately, this is usually not what happens in reality. If you’re normally consuming an average amount of calories, or more, and then you suddenly drop down to eating barely anything, your body’s defense mechanism will go into action.
We all have this defense mechanism, so there’s no way to get around it. Your body will start to reserve each and every calorie that you take in for energy, because it thinks you’re starving to death. In a way, the 500 calorie a day diet is a form of slow starvation.
Now, when you inevitably get hungry for some more nourishing food, as you will after a couple of days on this strict diet, then you’ll probably end up eating way more fat and calories than you normally would to make up for the days you were deprived.
This is why people, who go on these drastic diets, always end up gaining more weight in the end than they would have without ever being on the diet. People think that it’s all because they lack will power, but really it’s just how your body normally functions and reacts to such extreme dietary shock treatment.
These kind of fluctuations are famously called yo-yo dieting. You try starving yourself into losing a bunch of weight, your body reacts by storing calories, and then when you can’t take it anymore and give in to all your favorite foods again, your metabolism has changed to the point of not being able to burn off enough
fat, so you easily gain weight.
It’s madness to do this to yourself over and over again. So in all honesty, I can’t recommend the 500 calorie diet, and don’t see any reason why anyone should
ever go on one, except under a doctor’s supervision for some serious medical condition.
If you’re really determined to lose weight, pick a healthy diet plan that allows you to eat some real food and get enough nutrition while on the diet.
By: Janine Michaels
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