Will a 1200 Calorie Diet Screw up Metabolism?

Okay this is getting silly.

If your caloric intake is not sufficient to sustain your body (eating significantly below your BMR) then your body will burn fat for calories and reabsorb muscle for 1) essential amino acids and 2) to reduce the amount of calories that your body requires in the future. What your body does NOT do is somehow store extra fat while it is in desperate need of calories because that makes zero sense. Seriously if you were starving to death and someone handed you a bowl of rice would you say to yourself "gee, I had better not eat this I should save it instead because I'm starving". No, no you wouldn't and neither does your body.

If you continue on this dangerously low calorie diet your muscle will continue to be essentially digested by your body along with fat. As your lean mass drops along with your mass your metabolic rate will drop meaning that your BMR will drop and your body will burn less and less calories until either

1) you reach homeostasis with your caloric intake
2) You start suffering from severe malnutrition and your body starts to shut down.


At no point during this process do you gain or store additional fat. No...no no no no no.

Is starving yourself a bad idea? Yeah. Is starving yourself going to make you fatter? No.

You are completely correct, and that is exactly what I was saying. At no point did I ever say you would get fatter.All I said was that your body holds onto the fat the it already contains and uses less important sources of fuel first. I said that by starving yourself your metabolism will be damaged and once you start eating normal amounts again you will more than likely gain weight BECAUSE of your damaged metabolism. You do not gain weight from starving yourself. You are just setting yourself up for gaining weight in the future.

Okay this is getting silly.

If your caloric intake is not sufficient to sustain your body (eating significantly below your BMR) then your body will burn fat for calories and reabsorb muscle for 1) essential amino acids and 2) to reduce the amount of calories that your body requires in the future. What your body does NOT do is somehow store extra fat while it is in desperate need of calories because that makes zero sense. Seriously if you were starving to death and someone handed you a bowl of rice would you say to yourself "gee, I had better not eat this I should save it instead because I'm starving". No, no you wouldn't and neither does your body.

If you continue on this dangerously low calorie diet your muscle will continue to be essentially digested by your body along with fat. As your lean mass drops along with your mass your metabolic rate will drop meaning that your BMR will drop and your body will burn less and less calories until either

1) you reach homeostasis with your caloric intake
2) You start suffering from severe malnutrition and your body starts to shut down.


At no point during this process do you gain or store additional fat. No...no no no no no.

Is starving yourself a bad idea? Yeah. Is starving yourself going to make you fatter? No.

You are completely correct, and that is exactly what I was saying. At no point did I ever say you would get fatter.All I said was that your body holds onto the fat the it already contains and uses less important sources of fuel first. I said that by starving yourself your metabolism will be damaged and once you start eating normal amounts again you will more than likely gain weight BECAUSE of your damaged metabolism. You do not gain weight from starving yourself. You are just setting yourself up for gaining weight in the future.

I think the confusion is your use of the phrase "fat is stored" which to most people means new fat tissue is being made/fat cells getting bigger/ etc.

what you meant was muscle is burned in preference to fat.

You know I'm reading through those links and I have yet to see a single one of them that says your body stores fat while starving yourself by having a caloric intake significantly below your BMR. Perhaps you can point out the specific part of the article where it says that on any of those links.

"You should never go under your BMR because it basically means your body don’t have enough calories to function normally so your metabolism slows down and you get energy from your muscle instead of fat (fat main usage is protection. when starving, it gets used after muscle). "

Muscle is used before fat. Therefore, fat is stored until it is absolutely requires. It's not rocket science. I sent you a response through message because all these comments are getting too disorganized.

Thanks for referring to those links. I learned a lot. I was one of those people that has been eating less than my BMR and working out 5 days a week but eating under my BMR is gonna stop today.

When you do not consume the proper amount of calories for your body to accurately complete its daily functions, it begins to store fat. No, this does not mean you gain weight right away. The reason for this is because your body begins taking nutrients and stored macromolecules from your muscles and other areas of your body. In other words, you are building up stored fats and losing muscle, and as we know, muscles are heavier than fat. So you lose weight. In this process, your metabolism is also badly damaged and slows down so as soon as you begin eating more again, you will likely gain a lot of the weight back that you lost while on a low calorie-intake diet. Once your metabolism is damaged, it takes a lot of effort to speed it up again. I can't possibly explain the whole thing here, but I recommend that some of you research this yourselves so you can lose weight more effectively. It's honestly as simple as eating healthy and exercising.

Actually that is what you said.

Specifically this part:

"When you do not consume the proper amount of calories for your body to accurately complete its daily functions, it begins to store fat. "

Perhaps you used the wrong phrase and were not saying what you meant when you said that. But you cannot "begin" to store something if it is not in addition to what you already have so people read that and rightfully assumed that you mean that people under starvation conditions put on fat...because that is what that sentence means.

you also said

"you are building up stored fats "

Again...how do you "build up" without gaining. This once again states that the person in this condition would be adding additional fat...that's what "building up" means.

Just take that part back or rephrase it and I doubt anyone would have a problem with the rest of what you said.

Yes, this is what I have been trying to tell people. My wording was off, and I have corrected it many times now.

The moral of this thread is eat more than 1200 calories and word things correctly or the mfp police will get you ...THE END :drinker: