3 Reasons Why Very Low Calorie Diets Do Not Work

"Eat fewer calories and you will lose weight," is what we are often told. To some degree, this is most certainly the case. The fewer calories you eat, the fewer calories your body has available to convert to fat. By this logic, it makes sense that the fewer and fewer calories you eat, the most weight you are going to lose. That means that if you severely restrict your calories, to a degree such as 1000 calories per day, you will lose weight quickly, right? Unfortunately, no, that is not the case. Very low calorie diets will not be successful for most people when it comes to sustained weight loss. Here are three reasons why.


Very low calorie diets such as the 1000 calorie a day diet are not sustainable for the long term. Some people are certainly able to do them for a few days or a few weeks, but certainly not for a lifetime. Restrictions such as this tend to lead to an obsession with food, which can easily swing from the restrictive side to the binging side. In most cases, you will simply burn out of this sort of diet quickly.


When you do not consume enough calories, you will not be able to work out as hard as you need to.  Your body needs a certain amount of calories in order to have the fuel it needs to work out.  If you do not get the calories you need, you will not be able to work out at the necessary intensity in order to lose weight quickly.  In fact, you may even become dizzy, pass out, or worse.


When you do not eat enough calories, your body’s metabolism will drastically slow down.  When you restrict your calories too much, your body will believe that it is going into a period of famine.  In an effort to prevent the body from starving to death, it will turn down your metabolism in order to prevent starvation.  In order to prevent this adaptive response, you need to keep your calories high enough.


At some point or another, most of us have tried to undertake a very low calorie diet in order to lose weight as quickly as possible. What we failed to see is that the quickest way to lose weight is to work with our bodies’ natural systems instead of trying to force them to do what we want. Extremely restrictive diets are not sustainable for very long, prevent you from exercising properly, and can make your body stop burning as many calories in an effort to survive. Never undertake a diet such as this when you are not being medically supervised.