The Dangers of Too Few Calories

This is a copy of my original post on, Homeflowers Attic

One of the temptations of reducing calories to lose weight, is to lower them to such a degree that we practically starve ourselves. We know this isn't healthy and we do it anyway. Why? Because we want our weight loss to be quick and we want our enthusiasm and effort to be immediately visible. This leads us to take in very few calories ... enough to keep us alive but too few to be healthy.

Does this sound familiar?

The dangers of taking in too few calories is far beyond health. If you put health concerns aside and you concentrate strictly on appearance, you'll discover a slow weight loss program is smarter and easier than anything drastic.

Here's why. The first point is your wardrobe. When you lose weight at a slower pace, you evolve your wardrobe around your current size, slowly buying smaller sizes as you go along. As you shrink out of a size, donate those clothes to your favourite charity. The second and most important point, is your weight maintenance. Once you've put yourself on a strict low calorie diet to lose weight, you have nowhere to go but up, resulting in yo yo weight. No one mentions how a drastic 1000 calorie a day diet can never become a stable *1500 - 1700 calorie a day weight maintenance regime. That's because once your body has been forced to live on few calories, it stops processing foods correctly because it thinks you're trying to starve it and starts to store fat as soon as it hits your lips.

For my age and height of 5 feet 1 inch tall, my weight maintenance calories are 1302 per day. That's fairly low to begin with, so my personal weight loss daily calories are between 1000 and 1300. You can check what your daily caloric requirements are at Calorie Calculator. Befriend me on Tweet What You Eat and follow my food and exercise diary.


* 1500 - 1700 more or less depending on your weight, height and activity level. This is a random number