Dangerous Diet?

ThrillaGorilla

I am at a loss here, and I'm hoping you guys at H/A can help me. First off I am a very thin guy, always have been, so dieting has never been something I have had to deal with. My girlfriend has trouble keeping weight off and has just started a diet that I have some concerns about. Her regimen is to drink a Slim Fast shake for breakfast, a Slim Fast bar for lunch and then whatever she wants for dinner. At first I didn't have any real problem with the diet, but she is always complaining about being hungry which made me start doing a little research. From what I can find the minimum calorie intake for an adult female is 1200-1500. Her breakfast and lunch account for ~400 calories, and the healthy dinners we have been making can not be pushing that 800+ calories higher. She says one of her friends did this in high school and lost a ton of weight, but I really worry about the long term safety of this diet. Is this basically a starvation diet? Should I just chill out and stop worrying so much?

Iroh

It's certainly not doing her metabolism any favors to limit herself to three meals a day that are in no way consistent with one another, even if she does get enough calories per day. Is she exercising at all? If not, it would be a huge benefit for her to take that up rather than risk eating too little.

The fitness thread here in H/A would be an excellent place to research what a good weight loss routine and diet look like, and then compare that to what she is doing.

bowen

1200 is the absolute minimum (she should be shooting for 1500-1600).

The problem is there's 3500 calories in a pound of bodyfat, so in order to burn a pound you'd need to cut out that much from your diet, and that's why a calorie reduction method is hard alone. Coupling this with exercise means you can cut out a little less and achieve the same results. The biggest concern is that your body is probably going to switch into famine mode which means any carbohydrates it comes into contact with are going to be converted directly into fat. Which is going to cause her to balloon up.

She should likely stop eating shit food and exercise. Breakfast is one of the more important meals, a substantially large breakfast is better than a substantially large dinner to help kick start out of night-time fasting. But spreading that out throughout the day is better in the long run as it keeps the metabolism burning steadily.

The fitness thread might have more or better information regarding the proper diet.

Thanatos

This is, in fact, a starvation diet. Doing that is going to cause her to lose weight, but a lot of that weight is going to be muscle. Furthermore, she's probably not getting all the nutrients she needs, which is going to make her even more unhealthy. Is she going to get ill from it? Unlikely. I mean, she might catch a cold or something her body would have otherwise fought off, but other than that, she'll be relatively fine. She will, however, be hungry most of the time (because she's not eating enough), and she's probably going to find herself feeling fatigued a lot, and not sleeping well. When she's done with the diet, she'll probably put a fair amount of the weight back on, because she's trained her metabolism to burn as little as possible, so when she goes back to a "normal" diet--even if it's a healthy one--her body is going to convert those extra calories into fat. In addition, due to the muscle loss, she's not going to be burning anywhere near as many "resting" calories as she did prior to the diet. So, it's not just that it's an unhealthy diet; it's also counterproductive if her goal is long-term weight loss. If she's just trying to fit into a dress for someone's wedding or something, then yeah, that will be just fine.

As everyone else points out , the Fitness Thread is a great place to start if you're looking to lose weight in a healthy manner. Three meals a day is not healthy. She should be eating 5-6, at least. Snacking is good for you, as long as the snacks are healthy. And yeah, 1500 calories is a minimum if you're a female in your 20s.

[Michael]

While I was shadowing a doctor for two weeks, there were lots of people asking about how to lose weight. I think the range on caloric intake the doctor suggested was from about 1300-2000, all depending on the size and age of the woman (though it was much higher for men, started at about 1800). It is fewer calories than is recommended by a medical professional, it probably is a starvation diet (though I don't know if there's some formal definition to a starvation diet of some sort). Of course her friend lost weight by doing it; a caloric deficit is how you lose weight, but you typically achieve the deficit by diet and exercise (which as a nice side effect can slow muscle loss, so you aren't just fat and bones). I think the doctor suggested to start really simple on the exercise, just find something that is hard for you to keep up for 10 minutes (jump rope, swimming, jogging, cycling, etc.) and just do it everyday. Eventually you'll find that 10 minutes is very doable, and then you can increase the time you do it for, or the intensity. I'm pretty sure the fitness thread says cardio should be 20 minutes minimum or something like that, though. I'm sure the peoples who post in the fitness thread regularly a lot are much more knowledgeable than me on this, and they probably have better advice.

edit: and looky there, it's the better advice I was talking about, all posted while I was typing that. Hooray!

RUNN1NGMAN

If she's insistent on doing the Slim-Fast thing, she should check out their website, because it appears that you are supposed to be supplementing that shake and bar with fruit or other snacks and a sandwich or something for lunch.

GameHat

IANAD, but:

basic rule is - to lose weight you need to reduce calorie intake.

Go too low - your body panics and puts you in starvation mode. This is unhealthy. You burn muscle, risk malnutrition and feel like shit. I've done this myself. It doesn't work. Eventually your body wins and you gorge, undoing any weight loss.

"always hungry" is an alarm bell. If you hit a sustainable calorie rate for weight loss your body should adjust and the hunger should diminish. I've done this as well.

If she's always hungry, have her up her calorie intake by maybe 100 kcal / day / week until she both stops feeling hungry all the time and is still losing weight.

Listening to the body is very helpful.

AlyceInWonderland

I hate the slim fast diet. It sucks, and their shakes suck. If anything, she should eat when she's hungry and until she's satisfied (not engorged). It's not a 'diet' and it raises your metabolism, and I've lost like 30 pounds doing it. People are so conditioned now a days to eat well past until they feel full because they don't realize it ( possibly because they're eating so fast), that they keep putting on weight. or they don't eat enough, and your body goes into starvation mode, and they keep putting on weight.

the best 'diet' one can possibly do is eat when you're hungry and stop when you're satisfied. +3 if you eat healthy things.

Nova_C

I've recently seen a lot of success in losing weight (Almost 40 pounds now) and I'm pretty sure she's setting herself up for failure. One of the things about 'diet' is that if you want to lose weight permanently you have to have a diet you are comfortable with maintaining for the rest of your life.

It's probably not the best thing, but I've been eating those Lean Cuisine dinners for supper. And JUST one of those. It helps because it's a very specific portion and my problem (And probably most people's problem) is portion control. I eat fruit for breakfast and since I'm lazy either a veggie salad or a deli sandwich for lunch (Hold the mayo).

What I've been doing has also drastically reduced my sodium intake, which is another thing to watch out for with what you eat - according to Wikipedia (So, talk to a professional first for confirmation) the body only needs about 500mg a day. The average north American diet is something like 5000 mg a day.

I've been working on a homemade chicken dinner plan to get me off the Lean Cuisine stuff because it's a little expensive for what you get, but it's a start.

Thanatos

Sodium intake varies by individual. Since we started iodizing our salt, it's important that you at least get a little bit in order to maintain thyroid health. Less is better, but the RDA on it is--depending on who you talk to--between 1500 and 3000 milligrams, assuming you don't have any heart problems/family history of heart problems. Certainly, most US diets get way more than that.

witch_ie

I've done this diet before and really didn't lose any weight - I also didn't feel like I was starving, nor did my body react as if it was. What your girlfriend needs to do is make a lifestyle change which is a lot harder than just being hungry all the time. She needs to work exercises of some sort into her daily life and be able to stick to a diet that she could happily and healthily maintain for the rest of her life. I'm guessing this will not include Slimfast.

Another thing that you might want to mention to your girlfriend is that a woman's metabolism changes over time so, what worked during high school for her friend, might not work for her now. I think the main thing she needs to focus on is when she does lose weight, she needs to make sure she's not losing too many pounds at a time. Usually, I've heard that you don't want to go more than 2 pounds/week to keep it off.