Extreme Dieting: A Recipe For Disaster

Ever wonder why some people have a harder time than others when it comes to losing unnecessary weight?

I have a sister who is in her 40’s. She can eat all day and stay slim. How can she get away with this? Two words: high metabolism.

It is your thyroid gland that determines much of your metabolism. Anything causing this gland to malfunction may drastically affect your body’s ability to lose or gain weight. A condition called results from an overactive thyroid. If your thyroid is overactive, your metabolism is fast, and your body burns calories quickly and easily.hyperthyroidism

Hypothyroidism is the opposite. This condition causes your metabolism to work slower than it should. If your metabolism is slow, it seems like every calorie you eat turns into a fat cell.

Congenital hypothyroidism is a great factor in determining how your thyroid gland will function. But your thyroid gland is not the only thing that determines your metabolic rate. Dieters should avoid the extreme of starving themselves as a means to lose weight.

If you are dieting, you need to know how cutting calories can affect your metabolism. Obviously, if you eat more calories than you burn, eventually you will gain weight. So what can you do? You can eat fewer calories and you can burn more calories, until you consume fewer calories than you burn. This is the basic principle behind weight loss diets.

Some who want to shed those extra pounds as quickly as possible try going on a near starvation diet. It seems like it should work, but in the end it doesn’t. Eating way too few calories can be a problem for dieters? Yes, because a starvation condition forces your body’s metabolism to enter into hoard mode. This is where the body understands that it is starving. Rather, it responds to its starvation. Your body doesn’t understand the difference between starvation and intentional dieting. In order to preserve itself, it slows down its metabolism for you–whether you want it to or not. The moment you eat normally again, your hoarding metabolism tries desperately to conserve every calorie that you take in. It stockpiles energy, in the form of fat, as a response to your extreme diet. It doesn’t know when it will have a normal calorie intake again.

Many who have starved themselves have found, to their great disappointment that they end up regaining the pounds that they starved off, and often more.

To be a successful dieter, you must consume a quantity of calories that falls between the amount needed to maintain your present body weight, and the amount that causes your metabolism to go into hoard mode. Consult your physician or your nutritionist to learn how many calories–and what kind of food–you should be consuming each day.

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