The Dangers of Very Low Calorie Diets

When you want to lose weight, a very low-calorie diet can seem attractive. After all, the sooner you lose weight the better, right?

Well...no, that's not right. Eating fewer than 1000 calories a day can, at best be a short-lived attempt at dieting, at worst it could be a recipe for long term health problems.

Your body is not designed to function well on a very low calorie diet. In fact, it goes into starvation or famine mode and tries to preserve essential functions at the expense of the less essential ones.

So what happens to your body on fewer than 1000 calories a day?

• Your metabolism slows down to conserve energy.
• Your body uses blood sugar, made from carbohydrates, for fuel just as a car uses gas (petrol). Without blood sugar, the brain and central nervous system, as well as other bodily systems, will cease to work efficiently.
• To try to counteract the lack of blood sugar from carbohydrates in the diet, your body will break down fat, which is what you want, but it will also breakdown muscle and other lean body tissue.
• Losing lean body tissue can be very dangerous. Even organs can be broken down to use as fuel.
• Losing lean body tissue can also be counter-productive. Muscle tissue increases the resting metabolic rate. With reduced amounts of muscle, your metabolism will slow. When you come off the diet, increased fat cells will form because your metabolism is slow and so your body needs less blood sugar for fuel. It is also a survival mechanism in case of another 'famine'.
• With very low calorie diets, an imbalance in minerals and electrolytes can occur, which can be dangerous. These govern the balance of fluids in the body allowing nerves and muscles to function.
• Osteoporosis can be another danger, especially for women. Often dairy products like eggs, milk and cheese are cut out of a very low calorie diet so cutting out a major source of calcium leading to loss of bone mass.
• Anaemia (a lack of iron in the blood) can also be another risk. If taken to extremes, women can find that menstuation (periods) becomes irregular or stops altogether.
• A lack of serotonin in the brain can be another problem which leads to clinical depression.
• You might find that the lack of essential nutrients on a very low calorie diet leads to a deterioration in the condition of your hair and nails.
• One of the great dangers of this kind of dieting is that you can become acclimatised to it. As your body reduces some of its functions, including those of the brain and nerves, and as depression takes hold due to a lack of serotonin, you can slip into anorexia nervosa - a truly life threatening condition.
• As mentioned above, when you finally come off this diet, you will almost certainly regain all the weight you have lost plus more leading to yoyo dieting, now believed to be dangerous.
  

Altogether, very low calorie diets are a danger to physical and mental health. They are counter-productive and can lead to long term problems as well as a lifetime of yoyo dieting. It is far better to lose weight safely and slowly on a sensible low calorie diet or with an organisation like Weight Watchers®. The only exception to this is when you go on a very low calorie diet ordered and monitored by your doctor.

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Copyright © 2005 - Carol Fisher