Has it ever occurred to you that you could lose weight really quickly if you just stopped eating? You will burn up around 70 calories per hour, ie 1600 per day even if you stay in bed all day. It is obvious that if someone is starved, and we have all see those pitiful famine victims on the news, they will lose all of their body fat and eventually die.
So is fasting for weight loss a good idea ? Not to extreme of course but simply for amazing weight loss?
Fasting from food and simply drinking pure water for a long period would eventually work but not in the way you hope.
Your body will not take kindly to a complete withdrawal of food. At first you will lose weight quickly but very soon your body will notice that there is a famine and will slow down your metabolism so as to reduce the number of calories needed to keep you alive. Because of the initial rapid weight loss you will experience a strong hunger. You will simply not be able to think of anything else than how much you need food.
You will also feel very tired and your brain will not work as quickly as it normally does. It is trying to conserve energy in order to keep yo alive.
Fatigue, dizziness and difficulty concentrating are only a few of the symptoms that will result from fasting to lose weight. Dehydration is also likely, since much of our fluid intake is from food, not drinks. So fasting removes a big source of the daily fluids that we need to function properly. The result of this dehydration is kidney disease- not right away perhaps but in the future. Your kidneys have the job of cleaning waste material or toxins from your blood. Kidneys also regulate blood pressure and stimulate the bone marrow to make red blood cells. When you starve yourself you also increase the risk of heart attack .Even if your fast is ended long before death, which would happen in about 4 weeks, serious physical effects would occur.
Going without food for a few hours or even a day isn’t dangerous, though it can be uncomfortable since you’ll get very hungry. If you fast for longer the weight you lose will not be only from body fat. No, the weight loss will come from your muscles including the heart muscle. You would die of heart failure if you continued to fast from all nutrients. That is what causes death in anorexics.
But what if you fasted only for a couple of weeks? Well even that isn’t the answer because you would lose muscle as well as fat and would end up very flabby unless you do some strength training exercises. But doing strength training exercises while fasting is almost impossible as you have no energy reserves.
When you finally begin to eat again the calories in your food will be carefully conserved and any surplus stored so that you eventually regain more weight than you have lost. Your body will want to be very sparing with the amount of energy you burn because it wants to keep you alive. So your metabolism is slowed down. This is also what happens with very low calorie diets. They seem to work like magic but the legacy they leave is very depressing. Fasting to lose weight and very low calorie diets are the way to grow fat!
One kind of fasting that can be effective is juice fasting. Although it is called fasting it really isn’t because you are able to drink as much freshly squeezed fruit and vegetable juice as you need. You get enough fluids and you get super nutrition which includes vitamins, minerals and enzymes. Learn more about the juice fast .
Another way to use fasting to lose weight is to fast on alternate days or fast just on 2 days a week. This is new science and is beginning to show excellent results not just in weight loss but also in health and longevity. Read more about alternate day fasting. The alternate day fast is my diet of choice now.
