Is Taking 500-Calorie Diet Right For You?

People nowadays try many ways to lose their weight. They even risk their lives when taking the 500-Calorie Diet. Though they know that it is risky, this method is becoming more and more popular.

 

This diet is considered a low calorie diet as it involves taking in less than 1200 calories each day. The purpose of low calorie diets is to burn fat loss rapidly, and rapid weight loss can be dangerous if not done properly with the help of a qualified diet professional. It would be advisable to seek medical advice before embarking on an extreme low calorie diet. However, here is some information to help you decide if this type of diet is right for you.

 

It seems obvious that if you eat fewer calories than you expend in a day, you will lose weight. However, if your calorie intake is too low, then the diet can be more harmful than helpful. What happens in this case is that your metabolic rate changes, and your body desperately looking for energy, can begin to consume your muscles. As building muscle is the way to healthy fat loss, losing muscle to provide energy to the body defeats the purpose of the desired weight loss. It can also pose certain health risks.

 

500 calories a day may be enough for some people, dependent on these factors:

 

– Activity level

 

– Body shape

 

– Height

 

– Level of fitness and health

 

– Sex

 

However, for people who are bigger than average, eating only 500 calories of food in a day would not be enough to meet their basic needs and it would be like starving themselves. These people would be likely to eat between 2000 and 5000 calories or more as a matter of course. If they dropped it suddenly to 500 calories, the body would react to this by going into starvation mode and slow the metabolism right down to survive.

 

There is a dirty trick to all of this, and that is the body can adapt to 500 calories per day, by learning to burn food very slowly. This means that if you then change your diet or come off one and you go back to your old eating habits, you will suddenly gain weight because now the body will get more calories than it needs and instantly lay it down as fat. You will gain more weight this way than if you had not been on any diet at all.

 

One way to find out how many calories you need is to use a BMR/AMR calculator. This will tell you how many calories you need to eat for your current weight, and to be healthy. If you want to lose weight, then subtract 500 calories from this ideal amount and you can then achieve your goal in a healthy and controlled way. This will not trip the survival mode and keep the metabolic rate up where it needs to be.

 

Muscles in men and women are different, and as it is the muscles that burn calories their intakes also are different, men generally require 1500-1600 calories for a healthy lifestyle while women need only 1200-1300. However, as these are only guidelines it is a wise move to check with your doctor before beginning a diet.

 

To sum up, a low calorie diet can help you lose weight, but a 500-calorie diet can be dangerous to your health. If you have been checked by your health professional and deemed to be fit, under advisement you can use a low calorie diet to lose weight quickly. Long term, a better option is to look at a healthy change in lifestyle that is sustainable.