Starvation Diet Weight Loss
There are many facets and issues to be concerned about when it comes to starvation diet weight loss. It’s no wonder that simple calories in and calories out has failed the vast majority of people who need to lose weight.
One of the biggest concerns, especially for those dieters who are counting calories, is the very real problem of consuming too little food. Diets below 1200 calories, which are often utilized, can quickly produce a state of starvation. The result of this is the production of a variety of hormones, which we have come to call the starvation hormones. The most common although certainly not the only one, is cortisol. Cortisol is a hormone produced in response to stress. When the body is in a state of starvation it is perceived as a severe threat because should it continue for any length of time death would be imminent.
Starvation hormones cause a variety of biochemical changes within the body. One of the primary effects of these hormones is a slowing of the resting metabolic rate as the body desperately tries to conserve energy and calories to survive the starvation period. This is the very last thing that someone who needs to lose weight wishes to experience. While very low-calorie diets, used sparingly, can produce and even oftentimes jump start an individual’s weight loss once again, the balance is delicate because if used too long starvation hormones began to slow the resting metabolism and offset any benefit as far as weight loss is concerned.
One simple way to help avoid the production of starvation hormones is to always take a full-spectrum dietary supplement while dieting. It is not only the lack of calories that can create a starvation situation, but also a lack of nutrients. According to many clinical studies, the standard American diet provides only about 50% of the optimal amount of nutrients we need for wellness. You can imagine then, that a diet of restricted calories and/or other restrictions, will provide even less nutrients than that.
The body requires food not only for calories and energy, but for the nutrients it contains or rather used to contain. When the nutrient availability drops below certain thresholds starvation hormones are produced rapidly. The concept of starvation while dieting is a major problem. Our studies into obesity and weight loss failure have identified many such factors and we will be publishing our findings shortly after the New Year.
