10 reasons why your body needs at least 1,200 calories a day, especially when you are trying to lose weight!
1) Your body will go into starvation mode. So, when you eat enough for an actual human being, you body turns as much of those calories as possible into fat because it doesn’t know when it’s going to get food again.
2) If you’re a teenager – then you should actually be eating 1500 calories a day. It isn’t like you are going to gain weight by eating a good 1200 calories. Of course you will if you’ve been eating only 700, but if you ease yourself into eating more calories then you will either gain weight, maintain, or just lose a bit less for a while (everyone’s body is different).
3) You are your own person… meaning that maybe your friend can eat 600 calories a day and not get tired, but you might get extremely tired. And even if your body CAN handle that kind of caloric intake, you’re just ruining your body. You will either constantly be losing and gaining back the same 10, 20 or 30 pounds or hit a plateau 10 or 15 lbs before your goal weight or when you finally eat enough enough calories your body will be like *phew* and let go of some fat. Are you really going to assume that your body will do the third thing?
4) If you don’t get enough fat, which isn’t hard to do on a super low calorie diet. Your hair can fall out and other things like your finger nails get all yucky. Yes, I said it, eat FAT!!!! Healthy fats of course!
5) Your body burns muscle before fat. Why, you ask? Because muscle weighs more than fat and burns more calories a day, so with your body in starvation mode it will try and burn the least amount of calories possible, hence burning muscle, then fat. Your heart is a muscle.
6) Your metabolism will slow waaaayy down which may not matter to you at the moment, but it is VERY hard to get your metabolism faster and don’t come crying to me when you stop exercising every day and get fat again. And yes, you will eventually have to stop exercising.
7) Less food = more cravings. More cravings = more likely to binge. And with your metabolism slow and your body in starvation mode, your binges will become MUCH more detrimental to your weight.
8) There’s no way you’re getting all of your nutrition in less than 1200 calories. Your body is like a car. You can fill it with the most expensive gas with lots of good stuff for your car, but if you don’t fill it up all of the way then you’ll run out and your car won’t start. And no, you can’t just “re-fill” it because that would mean eating more than or at 1200 calories a day.
9) “I’m not hungry” is crap. That happens to me sometimes and guess what? I don’t eat vegetables (I’m going to get V8 juice and I’m working on it, relax). I don’t eat vegetables, hence, I do not get enough nutrition. Maybe it isn’t vegetables for you – maybe it is protein or fruit or carbohydrates (yes, you need them to live). Also, when I was fat I ate ice cream every night. They don’t fill you up, so 1,000 calories of ice cream might fill you up as much as 100 calories worth of oranges. It’s about the density of calories, too. Even though I was eating 2,000 calories a day or so, 500 or more of that was un-nutrional crap, so my body was okay at 1,000 calories. Doesn’t matter.
10) Food is fuel! Your body runs like an engine. It needs high quality fuel to run effeciently!
BONUS REASON: Not eating enough calories may cause type 2 diabetes in the future!
