Why not starve my body of calories?

Question

In my mind it seems that eating food puts calories into the body, and exercise burns them off. So, it should follow that if you burn more through exercise than you put in through eating, your body will have to burn itself (fat and muscle) to keep going. If your primary goal is to lose weight and you are not concerned about looking muscular at this point, then why not eat as little as possible and run as much as possible?

Answer 1

1) because within a short while your body will move into starvation mode and your metabolism will slow down - which is not what you want if you want to lose weight

and

2) because most people cannot tolerate not eating for very long. this causes most people to binge eat to compensate which, of course, is also not what you want if you're trying to lose weight.

Answer 2

Your body has a natural defense mechanism. If you starve your body of food, it will begin to store anything you eat as fat, rather than burning it off. Also, you'll begin losing muscle while in starvation mode because the body needs fuel from somewhere. If it doesn't have calories or food to burn, it turns to muscle. Since muscle helps you burn fat, even while you're not working out, you DEFINITELY do not want to lose muscle tone. So, in theory, you might lose weight at first, but you'll quickly plateau and possibly even gain weight by starving yourself. It's best to find the balance. You should only eat about 300-500 fewer calories a day than what you burn. Keep in mind, you burn around 1,200 in just daily activity. So to ball park it, take what you burn in your workout plus 1,200. Then just eat 300-500 fewer than that. But never eat less than 1,200 calories a day. Spread your meals throughout the day, eating about every 3 hours. Periods of as little as 4 hours can cause the body to start to go into starvation mode.

Good luck reaching your weight loss goals! Just please do it healthily.

Answer 3

When you limit your caloric intake, your body thinks it's starving and starts holding onto the few calories you give it. We're preprogrammed that way. So your body stores those calories as fat, but then instead of eating the fat it has stored, it starts eating muscle tissue instead and you lose that weight, but gain fat weight. Your best bet is to boost your metabolism by becoming more active steadily and being sure to eat 3 solid meals a day and one or two snacks, plus drinking lots of water. If you want to learn more about this, go to www.thebestlife.com or check out a book by Bob Greene called The Best Life Diet.

Answer 4

The flaw in your reasoning is the body 'thinks' in terms of feast or famine. Deprive the body of food and the metabolism slows down to preserve what energy stores it has. If you decide to exercise a lot and sacrafice lean muscle the body will respond by making a person tired, irritable, sick in order to discourage using more stores than it has to function with.

The human body appears to have a will separate from our own and it's primary goal is survival. It's adapted over thousands of years for this one purpose--so even if you try to starve it; it reacts in a way to preserve itself.

When losing weight we have to learn to work in harmony WITH our body -- the minute we work against its natural inclinations is when we see results we are not after.

There is no good reason why people who are 'dieting' to lose weight should ever feel hungry as part of that 'weight loss' process.

Answer 5

because the body needs sufficient "nutrients" from various foods in order to function at optimum levels of effeciency. too many people simply focus on the calories and not the source of those calories as all foods are surely not created equally.

those that focus only on calories will never really see the changes in their bodies that they desire. eating healthy and being fit is a lifestyle

starving the body has never worked for fat loss and it never will. it goes completely against what is needed for the body to release fat stores at a high enough rate to see a constant decrease in the body fat %

Answer 6

Are you aware that your body needs those calories to run? If you don't eat anything then your body doesn't have energy to do anything.Plus eating very little slows your metobolism. I'm on the Weight Watchers diet and it is working well for me. You can eat just about anything you want just in smaller portions. I love it. Plus you don't have to exercise but if you do you will lose weight faster.. Its great email me at [e-mail] for more information.

Answer 7

because first of all, you are doin A LOT of damage to your body. 2nd, muscle is VITAL in losing weight. it has nothing to do with looking muscular. muscle burns fat. if you lose muscle than your metabolism drops. with a low metabolism, it becomes very easy to put on weight and add fat. and if you starve yourself of calories, u will lose much more muscle than you will fat. if your body is in a severe diet like that, it will use muscle as energy before it uses fat. muscle is much more efficent as an energy source for your body than fat. and the more muscle you lose, the harder it will be to lose fat, and the easier it will be to gain fat.

Answer 8

Because when you burn your muscle and fat it hurts the organs. They can't function becasue the body doesn't have any calories to burn to produce energy. Also, when you don't have any fat it can't cushion your organs so they are hanging there uncomfortably. It's an awful idea. Why do you think anorexics die?

Answer 9

Well.. apart from the obvious negative side effect of having muscles waste away and leave you a walking stickfigure that can barely hold their own weight up . . . your body needs a heck of alot more than calories. There are a literal ton of other nutrients it needs to keep going and to deprive yourself of them in the quest to lower your calories is flatout fatal.

Answer 10

depends on how much calorie consumption you take out, you shouldn't really go below 1,000, I did and my heart rate shot up from the over exercising and not enough nutrients from food, i had to go to the hospital and be feed Ensure to make me gain back all the weight and waste all the hard work because i couldn't exercise for three weeks