This Concisely Says It All

I recently found this write-up by a diet expert that we all should internalize and STOP hurting ourselves with dangerous and ineffective diets.  The bottom line is that a very dangerous effect of super low calorie diets for more than a couple of days, eg. 500 calories per day is that this is NOT enough calories to support brain function, among other things.   

Do Crash Diets Work?: The Yo-Yo Diet Cycle


If you follow a crash diet, you will probably notice that you do lose a significant amount of weight in the first week or so. In fact, many men and women notice that they lose five pounds or even more during the first few days of their crash diet. However, this weight loss isn't true weight loss ' instead, it can be attributed to the loss of water weight that happens during crash diets. This is because low-calorie diets cause the body to burn up excess glycogen, a type of glucose that absorbs excess fluid inside the body.

Additionally, weight loss during crash diets doesn't continue for a very long time. Eventually, you will find yourself hitting a weight loss plateau, during which it will become more and more difficult for you to lose weight. The majority of crash dieters find that this weight loss plateau is followed by a period of weight gain. Many followers of crash diets even end up putting back on all of the weight they lost, along with additional pounds. This is known as the yo-yo diet effect: just like the up and down motion of a yo-yo, crash dieters find that their weight is constantly fluctuating with each diet that they go on.

What Causes The Yo-Yo Effect?

Crash diets are linked to the yo-yo diet effect because of the impact that this type of starvation diet has on your body's metabolism. In order to support all of the functions that your body performs on a daily basis, your body needs to burn a certain amount of calories. The rate at which your body burns calories is known as your metabolism.

During crash diets, your body eventually clues in to the fact that it is receiving a very low number of calories. As a result, your body actually adjusts its metabolism, so that it burns fewer calories in order to perform all of its necessary bodily functions. This means that it takes fewer calories for you to gain weight, making it more and more likely that you will put on weight.