Why You Should Never Starve Yourself When Trying To Lose Weight
How many times have you been talking to a friend or colleague and they've turned around and said something along the lines of;
"I'm going away on holiday in a week, I'm just not going to eat"
Or
"I want to fit in my dress so I'm just going to stop eating - it's the only thing that works"
Now I've said that and it's in writing, do you really think starving yourself is really the answer?
Do the women you idolize your physique starve themselves?
Do women like this starve themselves?
Of course not!
So that's not the answer
Before I give you a real, sustainable approach to become stronger, leaner I'm going to give you 3 reasons why you should never starve yourself
I want to completely put you off ever starving yourself and I want you to share this with your friends and colleagues who have fallen for this trap
1. Starving Yourself Will Destroy Your Hard-earned Muscle
Building muscle, especially for women is a very, very hard task
It takes devotion, consistency, the willingness to push through plateaus and determination
Muscle's attractive. When you see female actresses like Alicia Vikander get in amazing shape for movies like Tomb Raider, her trainer focuses on her becoming stronger and building lean muscle
This takes a lot of time, focus and requires a lot of good nutrition. (If you want more info as to why woman should lift, check out my post here)
When you start dropping your calories way too low your body starts stressing out.
Remember it's main concern is keeping you alive, it doesn't care about your appearance
So logically it needs to find more stored energy to be used as fuel
As well as diving into the fat cells it will also tuck into your hard earned muscle
Thus you become weaker, start to lose your shape and...
2. Your Metabolism Slows Right Down
Have you ever hear the term that "muscle is expensive"?
Muscle requires A LOT of calories to exist
If I had two clients who weighed exactly the same, with the same build, but one had 40% body fat and the other only had 20% - the lucky lady with 20% body fat would require more calories to remain at her current weight, because she has more lean muscle tissue
Here's a snippet from a post from WebMd
"Muscle tissue burns more calories, even when you're at rest, than body fat. According to Wharton, 10 pounds of muscle would burn 50 calories in a day spent at rest, while 10 pounds of fat would burn 20 calories"
When your body enters starvation mode and starts breaking down muscle tissue for fuel, you're also destroying your metabolism
When you inevitably go back to your normal diet, your calorie maintenance level has now dropped
So instead of 1,600 calories to maintain your weight, that number is now 1,550
So you put weight on again. What then happens? You freak out and resort to starving yourself again to drop a few easy pounds
And your metabolism? Keeps dropping and dropping..
Pretty scary right?
How many people can you honestly tell me have fallen for this?
3. Starving Yourself Is Not Sustainable
Have you ever been playing in the pool with your kids or held your breath for too long underwater and found yourself submerged, but in need of oxygen
You're thrashing almost uncontrollably to get to the surface, almost unwillingly
You're scrambling, but subconsciously
We're all hardwired to protect ourselves and stay alive
Perhaps a bit less drastic, but starvation mode kicks-in within the body in a similar way
You need food to stay alive, now that you're receiving less, what does your body do?
Sends hunger hormones to the brain. Constantly.
You're now craving everything under the sun
Your bodies screaming out for food and do you know what will happen?
You'll give in. We all would!
If you match your elevated hunger with a slower metabolism, you're in trouble
SO MANY people fall for this trap and "fat loss" supplement companies encourage this
The less you know about nutrition, the more likely you are to stay un-happy about your weight and purchase more of their products
They've got you by the "short and curlys", and they're loving life because you're pouring money into their banks account
Your Sustainable Nutrition Plan
You need a plan that will provide consistent, sustainable results and help to build some lean muscle
The best thing for you to-do is figure out how many calories your body needs to remain at it's current weight (basic metabolic rate BMR) + how active you are - 500 calories
What this does is puts you in a calorie deficit, but not too low that your body burns much muscle and slows down your metabolism
To make life easier - sign into MyFitnessPal as this has a build in calorie calculator
Now that you know how many calories you require, you need a way of monitoring your food intake
To do this take a read of my post about food tracking here
If you track everything you eat and stick to the daily calorie goal it's almost impossible to go wrong
As far as diet and exercise goes, that's for another post, but I can almost guarantee, you know what I'm going to say;
Eat plenty of fruit & veg
Consume lots of water
Exercise more days than not
Sleep for at least 7 hours
Conclusion
Starving yourself really isn't the key to losing weight
It's unsustainable and will slow down your chances of getting leaner in the future
I know food tracking is boring, but you don't have to do it forever
Use it as a way of seeing where your diet has flaws and what's causing the weight gain
From here you can simply swap or cut out problem areas
YOUR TASK: I encourage you to log everything you eat for 2 whole weeks and see what you discover
I would not be surprised in the slightest if you feel more full during the day, have less cravings and even lose a pound or so
Thanks for taking the time to read,
This is a huge problem that I'm on such a mission to resolve. So if you know anybody who's tried every fad diet under the sun, but still struggles with their weight, please share this post to them to help them understand
Ben
P.s - If after reading this you feel you've fallen trap to starvation techniques and really have no clue what to do next. Book yourself in for a free 15-minute coaching session with myself. I can help make you a personalized approach to overcome this. BOOK YOURS HERE
