Thoughts on Pro-Anorexia Diets

bipolaroutloud

It makes me sad seeing all these young ladies doing pro-anorexia diets. You're only hurting yourselves. If you're feeling this low about your body, you don't need a diet, you need a psychiatrist. The ONLY way to really lose weight, stay healthy and keep it off is to adopt a healthy nutrition plan and get regular exercise. These are not quick fixes you can make, they are life changes. You need calories for your brain, muscles, and cells to survive and anything less than around 1200 calories a day is starvation. These kind of diets kill people. Please please please lose weight the smart way. Lean muscle and nutrition is the key to weight loss. I'm a personal trainer and I know the human body very well. Anorexia is not simply a physical illness but a mental one that should be taken just as serious as any other illness.

em9371

It makes me sad seeing all these young ladies doing pro-anorexia diets. You're only hurting yourselves. If you're feeling this low about your body, you don't need a diet, you need a psychiatrist. The ONLY way to really lose weight, stay healthy and keep it off is to adopt a healthy nutrition plan and get regular exercise. These are not quick fixes you can make, they are life changes. You need calories for your brain, muscles, and cells to survive and anything less than around 1200 calories a day is starvation. These kind of diets kill people. Please please please lose weight the smart way. Lean muscle and nutrition is the key to weight loss. I'm a personal trainer and I know the human body very well. Anorexia is not simply a physical illness but a mental one that should be taken just as serious as any other illness.

nice post, i think a lot of people on here could do with reading it.
Some do it intentionally, but a lot eat 1200 and then exercise most of it off without eating back the cals, which is pretty much the same result!

yarwell

You need calories for your brain, muscles, and cells to survive and anything less than around 1200 calories a day is starvation.

Can you define "starvation" please, as used in this sentence.

I am not in favour of anorexia or extreme diets, but I am even less in favour of junk science.

ironanimal

People get into a vicious cycle and the outdated dieting beliefs are to blame. You're always told to eat less and move more, but sometimes that really isn't the answer. They get to the point where they start to lose their lean mass rapidly, and their BMR falls accordingly, so to keep losing weight they cut their intake and exercise even more, which leads to more lean mass loss and their BMR falls accordingly, so to keep losing weight they cut their intake and exercise even more, which leads to more lean mass loss and their BMR falls accordingly, so to keep losing weight they cut their intake and exercise even more, which leads to more lean mass loss and their BMR falls accordingly, so to keep losing weight they cut their intake and exercise even more, which leads to more lean mass loss and their BMR falls accordingly, so to keep losing weight they cut their intake and exercise even more, which leads to more lean mass loss and their BMR falls accordingly, so to keep losing weight they cut their intake and exercise even more, which leads to more lean mass loss and their BMR falls accordingly, so to keep losing weight they cut their intake and exercise even more, which leads to more lean mass loss and their BMR falls accordingly...you get the idea.

You need calories for your brain, muscles, and cells to survive and anything less than around 1200 calories a day is starvation.

Can you define "starvation" please, as used in this sentence.

I am not in favour of anorexia or extreme diets, but I am even less in favour of junk science.

Deprivation over an extended period of time is starvation. Starvation doesn't have to mean the complete absense of food. 1200 calories a day is okay for very very few people - not the masses of people here alone eating that little.

yarwell

Deprivation over an extended period of time is starvation.

so that moves the target to "deprivation" - how are you defining that ? eating less than the rate that got us fat in first place ?

ironanimal

Deprivation over an extended period of time is starvation.

so that moves the target to "deprivation" - how are you defining that ? eating less than the rate that got us fat in first place ?

Eating less than is necessary to preserve the mass of your organs, bones and muscles.

LauraSmyth28

OP I agree, there are so many people on here that are just not trying to lose weight in a healthy way. It's disturbing.

yarwell

Eating less than is necessary to preserve the mass of your organs, bones and muscles.

Presumably the number of calories involved is only one factor in this, as with enough protein (and possibly resistance training) the mass preservation can be achieved at varying calorie levels.

ironanimal

Eating less than is necessary to preserve the mass of your organs, bones and muscles.

Presumably the number of calories involved is only one factor in this, as with enough protein (and possibly resistance training) the mass preservation can be achieved at varying calorie levels.

By extension, calories carry the nutrients you need. I doubt resistance training does much for the preservation of your liver, kidneys etc but granted it can certainly help preserve muscle mass along with sufficient protein intake.

yarwell

By extension, calories carry the nutrients you need.

So if we get all the nutrients and enough protein in (say) 600 calories we're neither in starvation nor deprivation, as defined thus far.

EmmaM2211

I feel your pain, sadly I've had to defriend a few who were eating less than 800 calories but burning up to 1000 a day. I tried to advise this was unhealthy and got a load of abuse from the girls and their pro-ana friends.

I hope they realise this kind of diet is not sustainable before it has a negative impact on their body that can take years to recover from.

"Food is fuel"/"your body is a machine"/"feed your workouts" are all very cliche but I still think they carry an important message. xxx

suziecue66

Yarwell we have enough threads on starvation I don't think your comment was appropriate when discussing pro-anorexia diet.

shannairl

I'm on 1200 calories a day and I eat most of my exercise calories - to be honest I'm pretty sedentary on the days I don't do exercise so the 1200 more than fills me - and my food is all healthy. I have seen some SHOCKING food diaries on here, people getting praise for eating 600-700 calories, and it's made up of complete crap like fast food, soda, chocolate - how is that good??!! I saw someone complain about hair loss, with a food diary of 1-2 items, and then get praised for losing .5lbs??!! That should not be allowed in my humble opinion, there should be something that prevents you from completing your food diary unless you hit your minimum.

The only thing I'd love to know about the 1200=starvation is this: I used weightwatchers to lose my first 30+lbs. I've added up my food diaries on here and converted them to points - and sometimes I'm over my "daily points" limit on 1200. I don't use their system anymore because I found it unsustainable.

I'm not arguing or picking a fight here, I'm just genuinely interested as to why it and its counterparts are such successful programs when they are allowed to advocate that.

LauraSmyth28

This site is detrimental to those with EDs. It's a pity some use it for a purpose other than what it was designed for.

yarwell

Yarwell we have enough threads on starvation I don't think your comment was appropriate when discussing pro-anorexia diet.

shame.

Merely requesting a definition of the terms used, makes it easier to follow a discussion I find.

yarwell

I'm just genuinely interested as to why it and its counterparts are such successful programs when they are allowed to advocate that.

Weight Watchers does well in part because of the group support in its classes. May be less relevant now with online support but has been shown to give better results.

I suspect if you follow their system as intended it's low or zero risk, but it would be easy to use "points" in an inappropriate way.

militarydreams

wrong topic... my mistake lol

Masterdo

You need calories for your brain, muscles, and cells to survive and anything less than around 1200 calories a day is starvation.

Can you define "starvation" please, as used in this sentence.

I am not in favour of anorexia or extreme diets, but I am even less in favour of junk science.

That would be something defined a bit like this :

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11430776
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19660148
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20054213
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17260010

Not seeing results that are predicted based on the assumption that your metabolism follows the norm for your weight as it decreases. Nice thread hijacking though...

A lot of the "starvation", or whatever you want to call it, were done with ED patients before they studied it's effect on fat people on diets, so it's in fact pretty relevant. Metabolic damage and other health issues related with massive caloric deficit from ED have been shown and not challenged in recent studies, as far as I know. The question of whether it translates to dieting the wrong way is the debate, though the body of evidence as a whole seems to point that it affects dieters too

ExistingAsAMemory

It makes me sad seeing all these young ladies doing pro-anorexia diets. You're only hurting yourselves. If you're feeling this low about your body, you don't need a diet, you need a psychiatrist. The ONLY way to really lose weight, stay healthy and keep it off is to adopt a healthy nutrition plan and get regular exercise. These are not quick fixes you can make, they are life changes. You need calories for your brain, muscles, and cells to survive and anything less than around 1200 calories a day is starvation. These kind of diets kill people. Please please please lose weight the smart way. Lean muscle and nutrition is the key to weight loss. I'm a personal trainer and I know the human body very well. Anorexia is not simply a physical illness but a mental one that should be taken just as serious as any other illness.

I used to be like that and it led to me developing an eating disorder, anorexia nervosa.
It's true, diets such as the ABC Diet and the Skinny Girl Diet are horrible- they lead to so many problems, the first of which being EDs. You don't NEED a psychiatrist, but it's recommended, because then you'll get the help you need, like I did.
Eating so much calories may seem frightening, trust me I know, but it's the only way to be healthy, along with regular exercise.
Skinny isn't beautiful; it's deadly.
So chin up lovelies.

MelanieAG05

The only thing I'd love to know about the 1200=starvation is this: I used weightwatchers to lose my first 30+lbs. I've added up my food diaries on here and converted them to points - and sometimes I'm over my "daily points" limit on 1200. I don't use their system anymore because I found it unsustainable.

I used to use a points based diet as well Scottish Slimmers. I was allowed 45 "checks" per day, each check amounted to 25 calories - thats only 1125 calories. On top of that you were allowed 2 pieces of fruit, unlimited veg and a calcium allowance all of which amounted to approx 200 cals plus veggies and I found that unsustainable and far too limiting! I supposed these things work for some and not for others. Personally I am on 1500 NET cals per day and even then I am still hungry sometimes and go over a bit and am still losing weight (allbeit slowly!).

yarwell

That would be something defined a bit like this

Well the first one doesn't even contain the word "starvation" so I won't be looking any further. I'm familiar with metabolic rate reduction in response to reduced calorie intake, it's a few hundred calories at most.

However I don't know what the "Pro-Anorexia diet" referred to in the OP is ? and we've converged on a definition of starvation / deprivation as losing organ, bone or muscle mass.