Reducing your calorie intake is far and away the most common bit of advice that people give when asked how to lose weight. This is indeed a valuable true, but only to a certain extent. After all, you can only create new fat reserves if your body has an intake of excess calories to convert. This can lead people to conclude that high calorie deficits are the best way to proceed when you are trying to lose weight quickly. So this means that if you eat only a little bit per day in order to keep your calories down, you will lose weight quickly, right?
Unfortunately, no, that is not how you will be able to lose weight best. These sort of extremely low calorie diets do not work for most people who are trying to lose weight. There are many reasons why these cannot be counted among fad diets that work, but the following three are the most important.
The first problem with the 1000 calories diet and similar low calorie diets, and in some ways the most functional, is that it is very difficult to sustain them for very long. You probably won’t have a huge amount of difficulty doing this for a few days, but it becomes much more difficult to stick to it for any longer than that. Most people end up getting burned out from the severe restrictions before too long.
The next problem that is going to frustrate your weight loss efforts while on a very low calorie diet is that you will not be able to manage the same intensity in your workouts. Your body needs calories in order to work out, and you have to eat calories in order to ensure that your body gets enough of them. Not eating enough calories means that your body can’t work out very hard simply because it does not have any immediately available fuel to burn. Even worse, your blood sugar could drop and you could get dizzy or pass out.
Your metabolism is going to slow down significantly if you don’t get enough calories each day. In order to try to protect itself from potential starvation, your body will adapt to the lower calorie level. This adaptation is manifested by a lower degree of calorie burn in your body. Keeping your calorie intake high enough will prevent this adaptation from occurring.