A lot of people who are unhappy with their weight find themselves wondering ‘can you lose weight by not eating’.
The reality of it is that you will lose weight by not eating but it’s not the type of weight you want and it will also have alot of negative effects on your body and over all well being.
Lets take a closer look at what not eating to lose weight can do to your body.
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Malnutrition:
Firstly you will be depriving your body of the essential nutrient it needs too stay healthy. We all need a combination of fats, vitamins, protein, fibre and mineral if our body’s are to function properly and stay healthy.
The initial feelings of a starvation diet will be extreme tiredness, leading onto negative feelings due to how weak your body will feel. If you continue not eating for prolonged periods of time such as a few days or more, you will be greatly increasing your risk of developing heart problems, liver problems and more.
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May Cause Eating Binges and excess weight gain:
Not eating properly may very well result in you uncontrollably binging. This is where our body’s survival instinct starts kicking in. If your body doesn’t get enough calories its survival instinct kicks in and basically stores all the calories you do eat as fat in fear of you starving your body again.
Starving then uncontrollably binging results in the fat and calories you eat being stored on your body, which means the food is not used for energy or cell functioning. Again prolonged starvation will also result in your muscles eventually deteriorating.
So far the answer to the question: ‘can you lose weight by not eating‘ is no!
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Major Lack of Energy
Not eating in the hope that you will lose weight fast will cause you to have a major lack of energy. Food is essential for providing your body with fuel for energy to carry out your daily tasks and normal bodily functions. And you certainly won’t have the energy to carry out any form of exercise without causing yourself damage from fainting.
Even if you skip one meal you will instantly feel the effect it has on your body. You will feel weak and tired and ready for nothing other than bed.
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Headaches and other negative side effects:
Eventually if you continue not eating as a way of losing weight you will experience many negative side effects. It will begin to reduce the amount of glucose available to your brain, as this is your brains preffered source of energy you will start to experience headaches.
You will also experience some other very negative side effects such as fainting, hair loss, rashes, irritability, reduced sex drive and even depression.
So can you lose weight by not eating? No you can’t, because if you binge you will simply store all those calories as fat and even if you don’t binge you will eventually go back to eating some food and this will also result in you storing excess fat.
Not eating also has a major effect on your body’s overall fat burning ability making it hard for your digestive system to get back into full working order even when you do decide to do the sensible thing and just lose weight by eating healthy and cutting out some calories.
Basically starvation diet is not the way to lose weight. Increasing your activity level, reducing the calories you eat and not skipping meals is the best way to reduce your excess weight.
You can read our articles to pick up some tips on the best ways to lose weight. You can find these under our popular articles to the left of the website!
