Diets for quick weight loss can be very risky. But, do you like to take risks with your health? If so, the 500 calorie diet may be right for you. Even when considering diets for quick weight loss, the 500 calorie diet is an extreme form of dieting. However, it is very popular.
The reason for the popularity is that it will help you lose weight very quickly. Among people who are looking for quick weight loss, low calorie diets are quite common. But even among low calorie diets, 500 calories is at the low end of the scale.
1200 calories per day is generally used as the cutoff point to determine a low-calorie diet. In other words, anything below 1200 calories is considered to be a low-calorie diet. Obviously, the whole point to a low-calorie diet is to quickly lose weight. But again, this can’t be over stressed, severely limiting your caloric intake is very dangerous. Any low-calorie diet should be thoroughly planned with your nutritionist and/or your family doctor.
It’s well known that the best way to lose weight is to burn more calories than you eat. You can do this by burning more, or by eating less. Your body needs a certain number of calories just to exist. If you’re not eating enough, the theory is that your energy needs will be taken from the fat calories in your body.
The difficulty comes in the fact that our body does not know that we are on a diet. Instead, your body thinks you are starving and it will cut way back on its metabolic rate…in order to help keep you alive. It lowers the number of calories needed for survival and starts eating your muscle mass.
Over a long-term, this is disastrous. Your muscles burn far more calories than your fat, so if you lose them, it not only has a bad effect on your body but it also affects your ability to keep weight off in the future. The 500 calorie diet, as one of the diets for quick weight loss – works… but only for a short term.
Depending on your body type, gender, height, activity level, and overall health and well-being – 500 calories per day may be sufficient. At least for a short time.
For most of us though, particularly if we are overweight, eating only 500 calories per day is literally starving yourself. Your body is most likely used to taking in 2000-5000 calories per day – or more – and suddenly dropping to 500 calories will move your body into starvation mode. To conserve energy, your metabolism slows way down.
Your body will adapt and learn to live on 500 calories per day…until the day that you run out of calories to burn, then you will die.
The good news is, we usually stop our dieting before that happens. The bad news is, now that you’ve lost so much muscle mass and your metabolism is so slow, as soon as you go back to your old eating habits (and we all do) you will have a sudden spike in weight gain. In fact you’ll gain more weight than you would have if you had never gone on a diet to start with. Diets for quick weight loss may seem to be very effective, but they just don’t work over the long haul.
Using a BMR/AMR calculator is a very efficient way of determining what your healthy, daily caloric level should be. In other words, it will tell you how many calories are necessary to support your weight, your health and your lifestyle. Once you know how many calories are necessary to maintain the status quo, you can subtract 500 calories per day and you will have constructed one of the ideal diets for quick weight loss success.
Obviously, the mass and body size of women is dramatically different than that of men. That means, they need a different number of calories to survive. While the average man may eat 1500 to 1600 calories per day, the average woman may eat only 1200 to 1300 calories per day. You must consult your physician before starting any diet, safety has to come first.
Finally, when it comes to diets for quick weight loss…the 500 calorie per day diet is a popular one. But, keep in mind that it can be very dangerous. Clearly, it will help you to lose weight. But the weight loss is only temporary. It’s going to come right back as soon as you stop the diet. Unless you are under the constant supervision and monitoring of a doctor, you should never cut back your calories that dramatically.
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