What Happens to Your Body on a Starvation Diet

Many people think that starving yourself is a quick fix diet. However, it is not true. These people are misinformed and are actually harming themselves.

Since, when you eat a lot of food, the fat gets packed on. Some people think that by not eating at all they are ridding themselves of the fat, but in fact it sometimes causes you to gain weight. When you starve yourself, your metabolism is harmed. It stops working as fast as it was working before. Eating the right foods and correctly eating lets you keep a healthy metabolism.

This is caused because when your basal metabolic rate is reduced your body takes precautions to protect itself. The calories you are losing by not eating are causing you to lose energy. Your body, therefore, stores up the fat it has to keep what little energy as possible during the fasting.

Speeding up your metabolism is a better way to lose weight instead of starving yourself. Besides, by starving yourself you are causing your body to have serious health problems and not even losing weight the way you think you would. The weight you have gained did not happen over night, so your body is not going to let you lose that weight over night either. So, by eating right, say by having 5 to 6 small meals a day that are good for you, you can speed up your metabolism.

This is the process that happens while you are starving yourself. First, your body will use up the contents in the digestive tract. Then it will burn your fat reserves. Next, your glycogen reserves in your muscles and liver cells are up. After those are taken care of, your muscles actually start to go. Then it will only take up to six hours for all of your glycogen reserves to be gone.

That is just the beginning of what starvation does to your body. After all of those parts are taken care of, the lack of sugar will start to effect your brain. Your brain requires about 120 grams of glucose a day. So, around your third day of fasting your body will start to use ketone bodies in place of glucose. This is still not doing much good when your body will still need at least 30 grams of glucose and now it is only getting at least two- thirds of that from your liver glycerol. The other third will come from the proteins in your muscles.

When people starve themselves they think that they will just lose fat and keep their muscle. In fact, your body will only use the fat reserve for a couple of days before needing the protein from your muscles. When this happens your metabolism is gone and your still fat. This is because the muscle that you have in your body keeps your metabolism at a steady rate. Without it, all you have is fat and your probably pretty mad, too, by this time.

So, when looking for a quick fix diet such as starvation realize that there is not one. A diet is changing your eating habits and if possible throwing in some more active activities. This will get your metabolism on a fast track and not cause you any harmful side affects.

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