Drastically Reducing Intake Leads to Long-Term Calorie Gain

Crash diets, fad diets and superfoods are all a gimmick. All these focus on eating too little calories putting your health at utmost risk in the following ways: 

Insufficient Nutrient Intake

Vitamins, minerals, fibre and other nutrients are critical for long-term health though they cannot be seen or felt, like the numbers on a weighing scale.

Let’s take the example of dietary calcium that supports bone health and bodily functions such as muscle control and circulation. During the first 30 years of an individual, excess calcium is stored in bones. After 30, once you stop gaining bone mass, you are forced to depend on the stored calcium to maintain strong bones for the rest of your life. If in case you are not able to meet the required calcium needs, your body breaks open the calcium stores and scavenge your bones for this mineral. This process accelerates your chances of osteoporosis (thinning of bones and loss of bone density) and hip fractures.

But even when you plan your diet diligently, it is possible to lack of nutrients such as vitamin E when you are on a low-calorie diet. Vitamin E is a fat-soluble vitamin available in foods such as nuts and oils. It is also an immune booster and an antioxidant that protects the cells from free radical damage. Antioxidants always protect cells against the damage of free radicals as this type of damage can result in cancer and chronic disease.

Too Little to Too Much

If you drastically cut down on the calorie intake suddenly, you are sure to gain back on all those lost calories in the long term. 

Decreased Metabolism Rates

Eating lesser than the required calories pushes your body to go into survival mode and breaks down muscles to release the glucose stored inside. This can deteriorate your weight loss goals as muscles burn calories round-the-clock. Hence, the lesser muscles you have, the fewer calories you burn.

You Run out of Fuel

Just as a car runs on gasoline, glucose acts as a fuel to your brain. With such a scenario, if you remain hungry all through the day, you can’t supply your brain with the required glucose levels to keep everything running smoothly and finally end up working sluggishly.

Neither Too Much nor Too Little

Very low-calorie diets (around 800 calories per day) result in accelerated weight loss but increase the risk of gallstones. Gallstones may cause abdominal pain and hence, surgery might be required to solve this. From this, we understand that very low-calorie intake or very-high calorie intake is dangerous to our health. So, how do we decide on the accurate calorie levels to lose weight?  Numerous factors are involved and it depends on the body type of the individual. To devise an effective and a healthy diet to lose weight, get in touch with a registered dietitian nutritionist at www.firsteatright.com who can help you devise nutritious diet options and prescribe physical activity tailored to your needs.