How Much Weight Can You Lose by Not Eating? Info on Starving Yourself Skinny

How Much Weight Can You Lose by Not Eating? Info on Starving Yourself Skinny
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Starving Yourself Skinny: Brilliant or Moronic Idea?

Starving yourself could result in lower numbers on the scale as you could probably lose a few pounds this way in a week. It makes sense if you think of how you lose weight when you’re really sick and can’t eat for a while. However, nobody with a sound understanding of how the human body gains and loses weight would recommend that you do this in a million years for several reasons.

Why Starving Yourself Skinny Is a Very Bad Idea

Here’s the short list of why you never want to subject yourself to starvation as a way to lose weight.

1. You’ll kill the best thing working for your weight loss: your metabolism.

Starving yourself will result in you losing muscle, which is the very thing burning calories for you and keeping your metabolism high. Your body can and will eat itself if you don’t give it a balanced diet from each food group in the amounts it needs. Half of your calories should come from carbs and half of those should be complex carbs. Complex carbs include whole wheat pasta, brown rice, and whole wheat bread. If the first ingredient on the label isn’t “whole wheat flour”, move on. Skip the “enriched” stuff.

Next, about one quarter of all your calories should come from protein. Those should be low fat protein sources like low fat peanut butter, chicken and turkey breast, and egg whites. No more than a third of your calories should come from fat and those should be good fats like olive oil, flaxseed oil, canola oil and other oils that are liquid at room temperature. If you have to scoop it out of the container, set it down gently and back away.

2. Starving yourself skinny? Kiss your good looks goodbye.

If you throw off that balance of good fats, good carbs and low fat protein, you could get dry and dull skin, brittle hair that won’t shine even if you grease it up, and brittle/cracked nails. Your hair, skin and nails depend on you eating a healthy balanced diet to grow and look great. Then comes stress from the misery of not eating which throws the stress hormones into overdrive. These hormones contribute to stubborn fat that won’t go away, sleep disturbance and the list goes on. In short, it won’t be a good look for you.

Basically, starving yourself skinny will result in losing muscle, keeping fat and looking terrible because your body composition is out of whack. A 100 pound woman with a high body fat percentage, little muscle tone, and bad skin/hair doesn’t look half as good as a 150 pound woman with great muscle tone, a low body fat percentage, glowing skin, and a shiny healthy head of hair.

3. Forget about thinking straight when you’re starving.

Not getting enough carbohydrates or calories in general will leave you with trouble concentrating and focusing, irritability, moodiness and a general cranky feeling all day long. To make matters worse, the fat you were trying to lose will still be there the whole time you’re going through this.

How Much Weight Can You Lose by Not Eating? The Verdict

Here’s the bottom line. Yes, you can lose weight by not eating. The problem is that you won’t be losing the right pounds and you’ll be sacrificing your future weight management success by burning fewer calories around the clock.

If what you want is to lose weight, look good, and feel good while you do it then simply cut back 500 calories per day and exercise and you’ll lose a pound a week. One pound of fat = 3,500 calories which is 500 calories x 7 days. Chips and soda together make about 250-350 calories. Throw in 20 to 30 minutes of walking, jogging or doing stairs and you’re golden. Your morning coffee may even have 500 calories in it after all the syrup and heavy cream is added. Just find one or two things to sub out for low cal versions. How about swapping coffee, juice, and soda for water for a few weeks? That’s a quick and easy way to trim off fat that’s much easier and more pleasant than attempting to starve yourself skinny.

Learn More About Healthy vs. Unhealthy Weight Loss

Would you like to continue your education on healthy and unhealthy weight loss? Try these links:

What Does a Healthy Diet Consist Of?

How to Boost Your Metabolism

How to Eat for Healthy Hair

Top 4 Ways to Shed Excess Water Weight

Just for fun:

Healthy Menu Items Quiz