Posted on June 11, 2015 by Jenny Cromack

The desire to lose weight has become more common in the last 10 years than at any other point in the last 100 years. As in business…if there is demand, their will be someone willing to supply. With this huge demand in people wanting to lose weight, it has given rise to a industrial juggernaut that is, in large, unregulated.. the weight loss industry. Whilst many of the’diets’ around are a safe and effective way to lose weight, a ‘bandwagon’ many companies have jumped on is low calories diets, but are low calorie diets effective for weight loss?

Most of the weight loss products which are promoted are unregulated weight loss agents, combinations of miracle foods, detox plans and fat melting shakes. In simple their plan is to provide a magic bullet that is capable of allowing there consumers to lose weight with as little effort as possible.  Its very interesting to note that the majority of individuals that participate in these nutritional programs tend to end up gaining weight following the plan.

The human body has evolved to resist weight loss and strive for weight gain, from an evolutionary perspective this makes sense, as humans that have surplus energy can survive times of nutritional scarcity. Individual’s who radically lose weight through a low calorie diet such as surviving on shakes and soups stand the ultimate challenge, maintaining it. Ultimately they have gone through a period of starvation and learned nothing about healthy eating and exercise, so ultimately the same thing happens……weight gain!

It has been stated that 12% of women and 8% of men use extreme weight control behaviours, such as meal skipping, fasting, smoking for appetite reduction as well as the consumption of stimulants. So what happens to the body when you go through periods of drastic calorie reductions, such as going on a three “shakes” a day plan or  a “meal replacement plan for rapid fat loss” or simply survive by eating 500-800 calories per day.

PHASE 1

• Well your going to lose water weight and a lot of it, in the first week it has been reported that 50-80% of weight loss from drastic calorie reductions is water weight. (Henry et al., 1996).
• Muscle catabolism will initiate, and you’ll start metabolising your muscle mass, so in essence you’re reducing the size of your fat burning engine…. if you’re into cars this generally means lower fuel consumption, this is the same for humans, less muscle equals less energy required. (Armbrust et al., 1999).
• Bone health begins to decrease, yet again more “weight loss” (Wolfe et al., 2006), but is this healthy weight loss? (You don’t need us to tell you the answer to that question!)

Brilliant, phase 1 has passed the weight loss company has profited and you’ve lost some water, muscle mass and you’ve reduced the number of calories it takes to fuel you. Doesn’t sound so healthy when you look at it like that but the number on the scales is down so that’s good isn’t it?

PHASE 2

If you’ve got the will power to continue the huge calorie defecit welcome to stage 2:

• You start to cause stress to your body. Tomiyama et al., (2010) demonstrated huge rise in resting cortisol after following a low calorie diet. This has been shown to have negative effects on the psychological well being of an individual and their biological health.
• Anabolic hormones start to reduce, lower levels of serum testosterone can be expected which further leads to more muscle mass loss but also an accelerated ageing process and elevated risk of cancers and other diseases (Cangemi et al., 2010)

PHASE 3

You’ve lost tonnes of weight, some of it is fat, a lot is not! You’re borderline depressed, tired all of the time, have sleep issues, your work will definitely have suffered, personal relationships may have been stretched, you’ve got a lot less lean mass than 3 weeks ago. Still sounding good?! We don’t think so.

Then you go to the cupboard and because you’re starving you ‘pig out’ and put it all back on, plus as the body is very intelligent it packs on a little more weight than you originally started with, just incase it has to go through this horrible process again!

In short if you want to lose weight and keep it of long time, it takes hard work and some serious dedication with sensible eating and exercise. Its not complicated through simply do 20-40 minutes of exercise every day, and eat from the land. In conclusion I think we can safely say that low calories diets are not an effective way to lose weight.

References

• Armbrust, S, H Schmelzle, and Ch Fusch. ‘Resting Energy Expenditure (Related To Lean Mass) Increases With Percent Body Fat’. Pediatr Res 45.6 (1999): 914-914.

• Cangemi, Roberto et al. ‘Long-Term Effects Of Calorie Restriction On Serum Sex-Hormone Concentrations In Men’. Aging Cell 9.2 (2010): 236-242.

• Henry, R. R. et al. ‘Metabolic Consequences Of Very-Low-Calorie Diet Therapy In Obese Non-Insulin-Dependent Diabetic And Nondiabetic Subjects’. Diabetes 35.2 (1986): 155-164. 

• Tomiyama, A. Janet et al. ‘Low Calorie Dieting Increases Cortisol’. Psychosomatic Medicine 72.4 (2010): 357-364. Web.