If you are looking for how to starve yourself, this article will help you do that successfully. There has been a myth or belief that starving yourself is depriving your body of food or taking little food significantly below your body’s daily calorie needs. This can help to lose weight as starving yourself leaves your body in a large calorie deficit and will lead to unsustainable weight loss. However, it is not recommended as an effective way of losing weight if that is the aim. This is because there is always a heavy food intake at the end of a starvation period.
Imagine staying hungry from morning to evening without food. Then, it is time for you to eat, won’t you eat as much as possible in order to cover up for the lost time.? This will lead to weight gain.
WHAT HAPPENS TO THE BODY WHEN YOU STARVE ?
How to starve yourself for weight loss is not a good idea. The body as you know needs energy to perform tasks and this energy is gotten from a type of sugar called glucose which can be found in foods like grains, sweets, vegetables, fruits, and even beans. This energy is released to the bloodstream through your liver and muscles ( where they are stored ) when the body needs it.
When you starve for about 8 – 9 hours, the liver has already exhausted it’s reserve of glucose. The body now enters into a state of gluconeogenesis : a process that transforms non-carbohydrate substrates (such as lactate, amino acids, and glycerol) into glucose. This process increases the body calories.
Eventually, the body runs out of these energy sources as well. At this point, a person’s metabolism slows down, and their body begins burning muscle tissue for energy. But, continuing to do this for long stretches of time is not sustainable. In fact, your body might go into starvation mode, where your metabolism actually slows down in response to a decrease in calorie intake.
BENEFITS OF STARVING YOURSELF
1. Starving can help in weight loss although this is not the case for everyone.
2. Studies have suggested that short-time starvation can improve cardiovascular health: Blood pressure, weight, diabetes and cholesterol can be reduced and controlled by starving. These are major risks for heart diseases. If you reduce them, then you can reduce heart diseases.
3. Starving can help you fight certain kinds of cancer. When your body does not have enough food to produce glucose, the normal cells go on survival mode, they try to slow down on their dividing and multiplying. However, cancerous cells continue to work as they normally do, multiplying and dividing with the limited energy in the body. Starving can help fight cancer as healthy cells are forced to hibernate thereby protecting them.
4. Also note that product like creatine can makes you gain weight.
RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH STARVATION
Although there are benefits of starving yourself, it can be risky for some people including:
1. People using medications alongside with food intake. Some medicines require food in the stomach to absorb them properly. Also, many medications has side effects like dizziness and lightheadedness. Hence. abstinence from food might worsen the situation.
2. Those who are pregnant or breastfeeding: Unborn babies get their food from their mothers, same as breastfeeding babies. If their mothers which act as their major and only source of food in most cases, deprive her body of food, it will pose serious effect on the babies.
3. People with diabetes: It is not advisable for someone with diabetes to starve. If you don’t eat, your sugar level could go dangerously low and medications like insulin may drop them even more which can led to hypoglycemia. Hypoglycemia can make you feel shaky or pass out.
4. Children and Adolescents: Children and adolescents are growing and as such their bodies need as much food as they can get to maintain a healthy body, especially for brain development. If they denied food, glucose is depleted. This can lead to changes in behavior from short temper to weakness.
HOW TO STARVE YOURSELF?
For someone fasting for healthy reasons, there are ways to go about it. Some of them are:
1. See a doctor: It is recommended to see a doctor before you start any dieting process. The doctor will be on a position to say the best time to starve and for how long.
2. Record your weight: For those starving to lose weight, you can take measurement of your weight each day before you start in order to know your progress level.
3. Decide the days you will starve: Starving is not an everyday process. You can decide to eat on some days and limit calories on other days. Eat full meals on some days and take snacks in between. Do not try to take in all calories in one sitting on days you starve.
4. Make your choice of foods you will eat: Go for foods that will make you fuller and take you longer. Eat foods that are high in protein with low glycemic index. Oats, eggs and beans are examples.
Starving yourself for a day can be beneficial in several ways. If it’s for health reasons, it should not be longer than necessary. Long term starvation is not advised as it strips the body of essential nutrients and cause complications.
CONCLUSION
In this post, we have critically looked out how to starve yourself for weight loss. Though, its not a good idea, but we have provided some basic and neccessary information on what to do inorder to loose weight.