500 Calories a Day Diet – Good Idea Or Bad?

Some people try to lose weight by going on a 500 calories a day diet. This is a low-calorie diet and the concept is very simple: you eat very little and you lose weight. Great, right?

Wrong!

This may sound like a great, and logical way to shed pounds but this is far from the case. In fact, a 500 calories per day diet has a lot of cons which you need to know about before you begin skipping meals. The main con is that this diet can actually make you gain weight! But I’ll go into that a bit later.

Can you lose weight when eating just 500 calories each day?

The answer is yes but only for a short while. And you will not find this an easy eating plan to stick to as it’s extremely low on calories. You may see some weight loss during the first week or so, but that would mostly be water weight. Any longer than that and you may encounter one of the following symptoms:

1. Tiredness – Eating too little can deplete you energy and make you feel exhausted all the time.
2. Lack of concentration and memory lapses. You brain won’t function as it should with so few calories in it.
3. You may feel irritable because you will constantly be hungry.
4. If you try to stick to this plan for a long time you may even begin to experience hair loss and other nasty starvation related symptoms.
5. You will lose muscle mass which isn’t what you’re trying to do. You want to lose weight but look toned, and you can’t do that when you eat so little.

But the main thing is that eating 500 calories a day is bad for your long term weight loss because eating so little causes metabolic slowdown. When you eat so little your body slows down the rate in which it burns calories so that your fat stores will last longer. This is a survival mechanism which our body developed over the ages and cannot be turned off.

As you will not continue to eat 500 calories per day for the rest of your life, when you begin eating normally again, your metabolism will remain at the 500 calories level so that you will see your weight shoot up even though you’re eating normally.

500 calories is too low and a very bad idea. You can lose weight fast without going to such extremes.