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Is Eating Too Little Bad for Women?

Jul 20, 2011 | By Lisa Sefcik
Is Eating Too Little Bad for Women?
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Safe weight loss requires you to find the right balance between exercise and calorie cutting without starving yourself. Medical experts caution against the adverse effects of consuming few calories --- extremely low-calorie crash diets can even be fatal. Not eating enough is dangerous for anyone. But eating too little is bad for women because they're more likely to develop additional symptoms when they lose weight too quickly or stay on starvation diets.

Calories and Women

On the low end, women need at least 1,200 calories a day, according to Harvard Medical School. Men require at least 1,500 calories. Women who eat too little or who embark on the latest crash diet to lose weight rapidly may not get the essential nutrients they need from food. However, being too thin comes with more dire consequences: Consuming too few calories can have more harmful long-term implications to your health. If a diet is so calorie restrictive that weight loss occurs at a rate of more than 3 lbs. a week, this can increase your chance of getting gallstones. Although this can happen to both men and women, women are more likely to develop gallstones even when placed on a medically supervised, very low-calorie diet, the Weight-control Information Network states.

Diet Dangers

Crash dieting can backfire. According to an April 2010 CNN Health report, eating too little food and losing weight too rapidly can not only cause nutritional deficits, but it can compromise your immune system, make you get dehydrated more easily and cause heart palpitations. Nutritionist Linda Bacon, Ph.D., told CNN Health that eating too few calories for a long period can make you lose heart muscle, damage blood vessels and set the stage for atherosclerosis and heart disease.

The Last Chance Diet was a popular but dangerous diet in the mid- to late-1970s based on a book by the same name written by osteopath Dr. Robert Linn. People who went on this liquid diet got 300 to 500 calories a day. However, this diet was linked to sudden death. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration launched an investigation into liquid diets. Reports from professionals in the health field suggested that 46 deaths and 200 injuries were linked to these diets. Although some dieters had underlying heart conditions, the FDA concluded that healthy people who died from ventricular arrhythmias did so due to atrophy of the heart muscle.

Other Complications

Women who eat too little food to lose weight can also experience the same symptoms as those with an eating disorder such as anorexia nervosa. These include fatigue, difficulty sleeping, dizziness, thin hair and nails, cold intolerance, dry skin, downy hair growth on the body, lack of menstrual periods and osteoporosis. Some popular deprivation diets deliver only as many calories as an anorexic might eat --- particularly dangerous are "cleanse" and "detox" diets like the Master Cleanse, according to the CNN Health report. Another fad diet that has men and women eating far too little food is the HCG Diet, in which you may get as few as 500 calories a day from your diet.

Just Enough Calories

Women may want to slim down to look good in swimsuits and stylish jeans. However, if you're overweight, dropping those extra pounds yields both cosmetic results and better health. You don't need to nibble --- you simply need to eat the number of calories your body needs. Each pound of unwanted fat is made up of 3,500 unused calories. Harvard Medical School states that if you create a 500-calorie deficit every day by reducing your calorie intake and getting regular physical activity, you'll lose 1 lb. of weight per week. Medical experts recommend losing no more than 2 lbs. per week to keep you healthy --- and to give you more permanent results.

References

Article reviewed by S.C. Ville Last updated on: Jul 20, 2011

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