Is It True You Won't Lose Weight If You Starve Yourself?

With starvation diets, you eat less than the minimum amount of calories your body needs to function properly. According to nutritionist and physician Dr. Ray Sahelian, the minimum amount of calories everybody should eat is 1,200. The ideal numbers are a minimum of 1,200 calories for women and 1,800 for men. It doesn't matter if you eat 400 or 1,000 calories a day -- If you don't meet the minimum, you're starving your body.

Metabolism

Your body needs a minimum number of calories to function properly. Cut down your caloric intake to very low numbers, and your body will slow down. This is basic survival instinct: Your body will try to burn fewer calories to prevent you from really starving, so starvation diets actually slow down your weight loss.

Water Loss

Most starvation diets focus on just fruits and vegetables, juices or soups. This means you'll be giving up grains and most processed foods, which can be high in sodium. Because carbohydrates and salt retain water, you're likely to see a big drop on your weight after just a few days on a starvation diet. However, this is not a real loss. Instead, you're simply losing water weight. Once you go back to eating solids and drinking normal amounts of liquids, you're likely to regain all your weight back.

Hunger

One of the reasons starvation diets don't work is that they're basically impossible to keep up. The longer you starve your body, the hungrier you will get. If you're avoiding carbs, your blood sugar might plummet, causing you to crave sugars in the form of sweets or other carbs. While you might stay on this type of diet for a few days, you will eventually go back to "real" food. Not only that, but you're likely to overeat to compensate for the missed days. If you give in to your cravings, you might end up eating more junk food than you normally would, only because your body is desperate for a quick boost of energy.

Muscle Loss

If you don't eat enough calories, your body will look for "fuel" somewhere else. Fat is a poor source of energy, so your body will first look at your muscles for the fuel needed to produce glucose. If you starve yourself for a long period of time, you will start to lose muscle mass. Muscle keeps your metabolism running efficiently. The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn doing any activity. This is why men lose weight faster than women -- Men have more muscle. As you lose muscle, your metabolism will slow down and so will your weight loss.