I’ve written before about how my wife joined a weight loss study that means she’s only allowed 1200 calories a day. I’ve never thought this was a good idea, I don’t think it’s going to give her a life changing plan that will last the next 40 or years or until she pops her clogs! Short term however it’s been great, how great? Well about 10 pounds in 2 weeks great! That is some very serious weight loss, it’s also part of the reason why I don’t think this is such a good idea.
Some Basic Maths
Each of our bodies are different, we all need different amounts of calories each every day just for our bodies to function. Don’t get these calories and things start to go wrong. Sometimes it’s just the number of calories that are really important, not how they’re made up. The accepted guidelines for the average man is 2500 calories a day whilst 2000 is about right for the “average” woman. These are the amount of calories just to maintain an existing weight (go here to work out your daily calorie needs). The healthiest approach to consistent weight loss is to burn 500 calories less than that amount daily. So for the average woman eating 1500 calories a day would result in a weight loss of 1-2 pounds a week. 1500 calories is enough food to live your daily life by. Below this level there is a fine line between extra weight loss and when your body goes into starve mode. If you don’t eat enough (regardless of the types of food) you will get sick.
1200 Calories Isn’t Enough
My wife is a very small framed, about 5 foot 1 and naturally slender. She carrying a bit of weight at the moment but the fact that 1200 calories a day has resulted in such drastic weight loss means that I’d guess she’s right at the very lower limit of what her body can handle. For women naturally bigger than her on this study they are really going to start suffering if they aren’t already. If this study was for 3-4 weeks then I could understand the thinking behind it, but it’s 6 months! Some people are going to get sick from this. Six months at 1500 calories would still result in significant weight loss for most women, it would also have the added bonus of providing most of them with a daily nutrition routine that would enable them to sustain their ideal weights (1500-2000 calories) once they’d lost the weight. Starving yourself (1200 calories allows for very little in the way of treats, it is not a fun diet) for 6 months is bound to result in a reflex reaction at the end of the study and I’d put money on most people putting weight back on within a month.
Personally I find the whole thing a bit stupid, there is nothing wrong with studying a calorie controlled diet but each person on the study should be assessed as an individual and given requirements that will give them some sort of long term benefit. As it stands it’s a bit like seeing how long your gold fish can go without food before they start floating to the top.
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