500 cal diet

first off, let me say i am more than twice your age, but very close in height and weight. So i totally understand how you might feel in your body; like you'd like to lose 20 more pounds to look fierce for your vacation. But please, please listen to us. 500 calories a day is not enough to properly nourish your body. In ten weeks you will be tired, weak, malnourished and not at all feeling like an energetic diva in a swimsuit with your girlfriends. I can promise you this. You are at the upper end of "healthy bmi" right now so a healthy weight loss for you is going to be more like 1 pound a week. Thats 10 pounds. Eating nutritious foods, moving around and enjoying your life and getting compliments on how healthy you look & what is your secret... and you know what, you will have actual healthy information to share with them! You will have learned a skill that you can take into your adult years and thrive. Malnourishing yourself intentionally, dealing with the consequences of that and the resulting weight-gain-rebound and shame just doesn't sound like a winning proposition, does it? I am soooooo happy that you are starting to reconsider your choice to go this extreme. When a person eats less than 1200 net calories a day the body WILL respond (and since you don't have much weight to lose, you will have this response faster than someone who is more overweight/obese). Famine response is triggered and your body fights to hold onto its fat reserves by canibalizing your own muscle tissue. The weight you lose will be more like 50% muscle tissue. You will end up with a HIGHER fat:muscle ratio at the end of this than you started with. And your metabolism will slow down considerably, making weight regain come on fast and furious. You will gain fat back and if you get back to 172, it will be a much more FAT 172 because you won't be regaining the muscle tissue, you will be regaining fat. Not at all what you want for your future, i hope. Please hon, i feel for you because, like i said, we are very close in height and weight and i totally get it. Its frustrating to want to lose weight and lose faster. Just get it done and get it done now. But this is your life and its better to think in longer-term goals for your life. You are young, but you aren't stupid. Just think about what we are saying and trust that we aren't trying to steer you wrong and only want the best for you.

take care :flowerforyou:

I really wouldn't do this, there's so many things wrong with only eating 500 cals a day not to mention it will completely mess up your metabolism.
If you want to lose weight for 12 weeks time you could sensibly lose 2lbs a week on here and lose up to 24lbs in that time. That's a big difference and something to be very proud about, rather than eating next to nothing in order to get where you want.

Im 5ft9 and weigh about 172pounds, im going away in 12 weeks and am DYING to look good, especially as my friends are all so thin. I know a 500calorie diet is far from healthy but its not permenant, if i did it for around 10weeks how much weight might i realistically lose? and im not saying i will go straight back to a normal diet after those 10weeks or anything because i know the weight will pile back on. I just want to know a realistic answer to motivate me.

You certainly will be dying to look good if you use this dangerous approach in such a simplistic way.

If you are willing to plan, apply and put in enough effort then an aggressive cutting strategy can be used in the short term without too much harm and with significant physique benefits. However, grapefruit diets, cabbage diets, diet pills or other such nonsense simply will not cut it in this context.

Purchase either Lyle McDonald's "Rapid Fat Loss Handbook" or Tom Venuto's "Burn The Fat Feed The Muscle" and apply the contents (in Tim Venuto's ebook there is a specific chapter on pre contest dieting - I think it is chapter 12 off the top of my head.)

Of course it will take a huge amount of effort to do this the right way but if you are committed then go for it...

oh my godddd seriously?! i need to get these pills. and well done thats amazing by the way! where did you get them from? oh and thanks for replying

Way to pick the one post that gives you the answer you want and ignore all the ones that warn you about how dangerous and unhealthy your plan is. You're 18. Don't be in such a hurry to lose weight. Learn how to eat and live properly rather than looking for some "magic" solution that will solve all your problems.

Wow!!! I notice That rofl!!! SMDH

I did 800 calories last summer and didn't lose much at all...all I did was mess up my metabolism so that when I went back to eating normally (1200 cals), I GAINED weight. I don't know how long it will take for my body to recover and to burn calories normally. It's still not doing it right, I think.

I agree - you will not lose as much as you think you will. I've been there I did this crazy regimen of eating once every 3 days basically and lost like 35 lbs in 3 months but honestly I could have probably lost more with a lot less suffering lol (eh i was young and stupid then)

I am just saying you might only end up losing 10-15 lbs with all that deprivation! You might just do something more sustainable (1200 cals) and exercise

If you are completely determined to do the 500 calorie diet thing - YOU NEED TO VARY the cal intake. You need to throw in spike days etc; same goes for exercise

Was going to post about the FDA recalling the pills mentioned on page 1, but saw a bunch of other people already linked to it.

oh and "SMDH" really?? you're 33 please stop using these acronyms its a bit embarrassing.

If I were you, I'd be embarrassed that you came to a forum called "MyFITNESSPal" and asked a question about everyone's thoughts on starving yourself. There are forums out there for this type of behavior, Google "Anorexia" and you'll find plenty. Best of luck to you in your goal. When you want to embark on a journey to become healthy and fit, I encourage you to return and join this community. Posts such as yours are ridiculous and make me feel really sad for you.

people she is not going to die I did 700 for 6 months and I am still alive as long as u get the vitamins and nutrients u need and it is not for long long periods of time that is what gets to me about this site we know our bodies better than anyone and everyone on here is trying to lose weight none of us our professorial people on this or we would not be here so why sit there and tell someone they r wrong for this they know their body not u or to tell them they r going to die come on get real that is why I hate these threads half the time because everyone thinks they know better or r very judgemental

Holy punctuation, batman... :noway:

I'd like to point out that she came on here and asked for input. She has received a broad spectrum of responses and she has the ability to decide what information she will take into account when making her decision. If you're going to ask for input in a public forum you should already be aware that you may not like some of the responses you get. There is no sense patting someone on the back and coddling them if they want input on a bad decision.

over the corse of about a month I ate between 0 and 1000 calories a day. not by choice, I literally had to force myself t eat that much. anyway at the time I was sleeping 14-18 hour a day, and what little time I was up I could barely function. I have done this a few times in my life and every time I ended up in the hospital. once I damn near passed out into a fryer. even if you ignore the toll this takes on the body, the actual weight loss is minimal. the body does not want to loose or gain weight, so when you starve the body it tries to minimize expended energy. so you lay around all day, there is no choice the body won't let you do anything else. all that being said, going back and forth between eating normally and barely eating I did loose a significant amount of weight, weight that I am currently struggling to gain back, but this happened over several years, not weeks.

if you want actual numbers, when I first started having trouble eating I was taking in under 1000 a day and lost about eight pounds of mass, but I think most of that was water weight. when I went to the hospital the first thing they did was put a liter of fluids in I got a total of four before I left. the second time over the course of a year going back and forth between eating and not eating I lost 40 pounds and since lost another 20. I'm now 180 pounds 9% body fat and still loosing weight.

If I were you, I'd be embarrassed that you came to a forum called "MyFITNESSPal" and asked a question about everyone's thoughts on starving yourself. There are forums out there for this type of behavior, Google "Anorexia" and you'll find plenty. Best of luck to you in your goal. When you want to embark on a journey to become healthy and fit, I encourage you to return and join this community. Posts such as yours are ridiculous and make me feel really sad for you.

did i actually ask that though? or did i ask approximately how much weight i would lose? i think you will find it was the latter. And i did this in the hope to get some replies off people with experience of a low calorie diet, which thankfully i have. And lets be serious here, im not the only person that is resorting to a low calorie diet for weight loss. And also, you dont know me, at all. So how about you think about that before you start judging and making accusations about me having an eating disorder.

To each their own. :laugh: Best of luck to you. When you gain all of the weight you lose back, there is a plethora of information on this website about fitness programs and healthy eating regimens that will help you make a change in your body that will last longer than an extreme caloric reduction.

ok u l know what before u judge know the story I had 2 miscarriages back to back and got run over by a car all within a year and could not move for almost 6 moths so u better shut your mouth I kept it off until all that so go f your self and that is what i am talking about jugemental crap u do not know me so keep my name out of your mouth

I was also vegetarian for 2 years and was a lot more thin when I was- if you arent consuming any of the processed vegetarian dishes and eating fresh fruits and vegetables that you are cooking without excess oil or salts, 500 calories can be a lot of food! (i mean, 12 oz of carrots is only 160 calories!). But, the most important thing to remember is that in order to make that work, you need to be eating grains and rice as well. Vegetables do not contain "whole protiens" (because protein is broken into different amino acids, and vegetables only have a certain number), they need grains that contain the other amino acids to work.(the only exceptions to this is generally the beans) If you don't want to have grains or rice, be sure that you are using a soy protein powder and adding that to your foods to ensure you get the right amount of protein in your diet.

Thanks for your reply, it was all helpful but this in particular is something i want to point out because CLEARLY the majority of people on this site just read things in black and white and don't even give a bit of time to consider something that seems a little bit controversial to what they think. At no point did i ever say that i was starving myself and wasn't eating etc, i am eating little and often and choosing low fat things like chick peas, lentils and porridge etc so quite frankly im getting pretty sick of being accused of all sorts from everyone that have just jumped to conclusions and completely judged me

agreed that is all a lot of people do on here

ok u l know what before u judge know the story I had 2 miscarriages back to back and got run over by a car all within a year and could not move for almost 6 moths so u better shut your mouth I kept it off until all that so go f your self and that is what i am talking about jugemental crap u do not know me so keep my name out of your mouth

I wasn't judging you, I was going off simply what you said. Relax, and stop being an "e-thug"