Diets For Quick Weight Loss - The 500 Calorie Diet
July 15, 2009 weight loss 1 CommentEngaging in diets for quick weight loss can be very dangerous. But, if you don’t mind taking risks with your health, the 500 calorie diet might be right for you. Keep in mind, that even when considering diets for quick weight loss, the 500 calorie diet is a very extreme form of dieting. Even so, it tends to be extremely popular.
Clearly, the reason for this popularity is that you will quickly lose weight. Almost everyone who has a need for diets for quick weight loss, goes to a low-calorie diet. But even among low-calorie diets, the 500 calories per day diet is at the low end of the spectrum.
For a diet to be considered a low calorie diet, 1200 calories per day is the cutoff point. Anything below that is thought of as a low-calorie diet. The whole idea of a low-calorie diet, of course, is to lose weight quickly. However it can be very dangerous. Any low-calorie diet should be thoroughly planned with a professional dietitian or nutritionist.
It’s common knowledge that the best way to lose weight is to burn more calories than you take in. You can eat fewer or burn more, either way. Your body needs a certain number of calories just to survive, and if you’re not eating enough, according to theory, your energy needs will be taken from the calories already in your body. (Your fat.)
The difficulty comes in the fact that our body does not know that we are on a diet. Instead, your body thinks you are starving and it will cut way back on its metabolic rate…in order to help keep you alive. It lowers the number of calories needed for survival and starts eating your muscle mass.
Over a long-term, this is disastrous. Your muscles burn far more calories than your fat, so if you lose them, it not only has a bad effect on your body but it also affects your ability to keep weight off in the future. The 500 calorie diet, as one of the diets for quick weight loss - works… but only for a short term.
Depending on your body type, gender, height, activity level, and overall health and well-being - 500 calories per day may be sufficient. At least for a short time.
It’s likely, that you’ve been taking in 2000 to 5000 or more calories per day. Suddenly dropping to 500 will immediately move your body into starvation mode. As it should. For most of us 500 calories per day IS literally starving our bodies. To conserve energy and to help keep you alive, your metabolism will slow way down.
You don’t want to do this for very long because your body will learn to live on 500 calories per day, right up until you run out of calories to burn, then you will slip into a coma and die.
Fortunately, most of us stop our diets before that happens. Which means that when your diet is over and you go back to your old eating habits (as most of us do) you will have a sudden gain in weight. You will actually gain more weight, than you would have had you not gone on your low-calorie diets for quick weight loss. Plus, you will have lost a great deal of muscle mass which makes it harder to maintain your new weight and keep off the excess weight in the future.
The most effective method of determining a healthy, livable daily calorie level, is by using a BMR/AMR calculator. It will tell you how many calories are necessary to support your health and your lifestyle. Once you know how many calories you need to maintain your weight, then you can subtract 500 calories per day, and you have one of the ideal diets for quick weight loss success.
Safety has to be the first consideration in starting any diet. You should always consult a physician. Clearly the mass and body size of men is dramatically different than that of women. The average woman may burn 1200 to 1300 calories per day where the average man will burn 1500 to 1600 calories per day. Primarily due to the differences in muscle mass.
So, to wrap it up… in the realm of diets for quick weight loss, the 500 calorie per day diet is very popular. It will work to help you lose weight, but it can be very dangerous - And your weight loss is only temporary at best. You should never cut back that dramatically on your calories without the constant monitoring and supervision of a doctor.
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