Why is starving yourself while dieting counterproductive?

Answer 1

Several reasons. First, your body knows you're starving it and it will shut down and hold on to ALL stored calories and fat to protect your vital organs. Second, your blood sugar will be come very unstable. You will be so hungry. Eventually, you will eat. And because your body has been starving, anything you eat will be stored since your body is afraid you won't feed it for a long time again---that means you will GAIN weight. And eating will make your blood sugar go way up and you WILL overeat...also helping you to gain more weight.

Answer 2

When your body goes into "starvation Mode" it actually retains fat. So if you eat very little which in return is starving your body it's going to retain the fat, which will cause you to gain weight. It's a safety mechanism (in a nut shell) to keep your major organs functioning, without proper nutrition they will eventually fail. It's pretty neat how the body has it's own defenses.

Giving yourself the proper nutrition your body will start realize "oh we don't need to store this" and you will begin to burn the calories that you consume. Best advice. Eat smaller portions more frequently drink plenty of water and walk. You should start to see yourself loosing wt. Good luck!

Answer 3

When you starve yourself, you inhibit your body's ability to burn fat. You need to remember that calories are simply a unit of energy, and your body needs energy every day to survive. So, when you don't eat, about 300,000 years of evolutionary drive kick in and your body goes into starvation survival mode. It sets of a chain of processes all designed to slow down your metabolism (the rate at which you burn calories) because your body always wants calories in to be equal or greater than calories out. So your brain starts sending signals to your thyroid to slow things down.
Then, you need to understand that body fat is your body's long term energy survival source. So, wanting to survive as long as possible, your body will do whatever it can to hold onto body fat. This is obviously not what you want, but it's what happens.
Then, your major organs (brain, heart, etc) can't use stored fat for the energy they need, they can only use glucose, which is what carbs break down into thru digestion. Since you are starving yourself and not supplying your brain with glucose, your body has another survival trick. It creates its own glucose.
Unfortunately, it does that by breaking down muscle mass into the component amino acids that make up muscle protein. It then converts these amino acids into glucose to feed your brain, since you won't do it with food. So now you are losing muscle mass.
Since muscle is the engine where your body burns fat for energy, you now have less of it, and burn fewer calories all day. This is another way your body slows down your metabolism to survive.
Eventually, you can't keep starving yourself, so you start eating again. Unfortunately, you've cratered your metabolism so when you start eating, you gain any weight you lost back very quickly. The bad thing now is the fact that a lot of the weight you lost was muscle mass and water. When you gain it back, it all comes back as fat.
So in the end, your starvation diet will make you fatter than when you started. This is the definition of yo-yo dieting.

Hope that helps,
Dave S.
Owner, Perfect Fit Personal Training Studio
http://www.thetruthaboutdiets.com

Answer 4

Yes, it is really bad for you. Your body will use protein from muscle and use calcium from bone to fuel itself. Both are very hard to reverse and will cause major complications as you age. Also, Slowing your metabolism to almost nothing. The body trying to protect itself from starvation will store anything and everything as fat. There are other ways to lose body fat ( in a healthy way). Please see the link below for what doctors and scientists have known for years and years. Good Luck

Answer 5

When your starve your body it goes into 'starvation mode' and begins to use fat and muscle to feed off of. Sure, you lose weight, but once you start eating normally again EVERYTHING is taken and stored as fat. It's your body's defense in case it should go through that kind of trauma again.

Answer 6

Well i guess that the body goes into starvation mode at first and doesn't not consume the fats then after while it starts to consume the fats under the skin so NO PPL starvation works but give it time !
If u wanna lose weight in a healthy way just ignore it ^

Answer 7

In order to lose weight, cure acne, build muscle, be less sick, live longer,have tons of energy, follow the 8 simple rules!

All you have to do is follow these 4 rules:

1.Eliminate Sugar
2.Eliminate Grains
3.Eliminate Dairy (Except Raw Milk)
4.Excercise (At least 30 Minutes)

Eat only this in your diet:

1. Eat vegetables
2. Eat fruit
3. Eat meat (except pork)
4. Eat nuts & seeds

Answer 8

By eating small meals every 3 to 4 hours you raise your metabolism. Your metabolism can be thought of as your "fat-burning" mode. When your metabolism is up (such as when you exercise), your body is using more energy. If your goal is to lose weight, then you want to keep your metabolism up as much as possible. When you don't eat, your body compensates by lowering your metabolism.

Answer 9

when you starve/deprive your body all you lose is muscle and water weight not fat and slow down your metabolism so you end up with higher body fat percentage.
body needs 50cal/hour just for basic functioning (like when you are in coma) and thats 1200cal/day for a person thats under 150lbs. and 70cal/hour for a person thats over 150lbs.

Answer 10

b/c your body is shutting itself down. it starts storing fat. And your metabolism slows way down so it can save fat to store instead of burning it off. While dieting you want to do the oppisite. you want to burn off the calories. you want your metabolism super fast.