Weight loss by not eating?

A load of people will tell you that it won't work, yet anorexic people lose a lot of weight fine. All this "your body will store all your fat and you'll put on weight bla bla bla" hasn't been the case at all in my experience. I did this a year or so back and got so obsessed with it, looking back I wasn't in a stable mindset, but it worked. I lost probably 3+ stone. Went from a size 16 to a 10/12 (back at 16 now, booooo). One thing to note though is that it really is true that you'll put it all back on when you start eating properly again! Good luck

How did you put it back on? But congrats on your initial loss!

I was originally eating a cerial bar and a bowl of soup a day, and as soon as I started eating 3 meals a day again (felt very weak and tired all the time), it was all back within a few months. Thank you

Well then, perhaps it varies from person to person if you're a case study yourself. True, for me personally I don't find that much of a difference or struggle to lose weight when I only eat once or twice a day.

Just saying that there has obviously been some research in the area and it makes sense to assume that there's a logic in what I said about metabolism, which I got from watching documentaries about food religiously. Also, the claim from health experts that's always in the press about "5 regular meals a day". Must have come from research.

A load of people will tell you that it won't work, yet anorexic people lose a lot of weight fine.

All this "your body will store all your fat and you'll put on weight bla bla bla" hasn't been the case at all in my experience. I did this a year or so back and got so obsessed with it, looking back I wasn't in a stable mindset, but it worked. I lost probably 3+ stone. Went from a size 16 to a 10/12 (back at 16 now, booooo). One thing to note though is that it really is true that you'll put it all back on when you start eating properly again! Good luck

I think everybody realises that starvation causes dramatic weight loss. That isn't the point. Chopping off your left arm with a machete causes rapid and dramatic weight loss. The point is the damage it does to your health.



In the first sentence you say that it hasn't been the case that you put the weight back on and in the last sentence you note that you do put weight back on when you start eating properly again.

It is a very basic idea: you starve yourself and you become very lethargic. You don't get all of your energy back straight away when you start eating again and your body takes advantage of that by storing food.

There is really no point in talking about anorexics in this context anyway. Anorexia is a disease whereby sufferers are pushed to the point of ignoring the dramatic reactions of the body to starvation. Anorexics manage to not put the weight back on because of a sickness that makes them override what would otherwise be powerful survival urges. In many cases, this leads to severe illness or even death. Try holding your breath for as long as you can - at some point the body automatically makes you breath. In the same way, if you starve yourself, your body will eventually do what it can to preserve your energy and make you ravenously hungry.

No, what I said if you'd read it again is that people try to scare people off under eating by saying that your body stores the fat you have and you actually put on weight, and that this obviously isn't the case with anorexic people. That's different to putting it back on when you're finished eating that way.

Ok. I have never heard anyone say that. I don't think many people really think that eating less makes you gain weight. I think most people realise that if you don't eat much you lose weight quickly since most people must have at least had the flu or something where they couldn't eat much for a few days.

The majority of people are just saying that after dramatic weight loss, you tend to put weight back on quickly.

I've heard it said a lot of times, if you just search it on google you'll see a lot of people say it.

I have only ever heard people say things like 'it won't work in the long term' or 'you will put the weight straight back on after'

I just googled 'starvation causes weight gain' and all of the first five links made exactly the same point.

Either your friends are stupid or you are misinterpreting what people are saying.

When I said that was what the science indicated, I was refering to research into the issue; not my observations of myself. I was just pointing out that I was biased because I prefer to eat less frequently.



No. Not even once.

Science, especially that pertaining to nutrition is notoriously misrepresented and poorly reported in the popular media.

A lot of the "health experts" are often self-proclaimed experts and not nutritionists in any recognised sense.

There is no logic in what you said really. I mean, your metabolic rate is essentially the sum of all metabolic processes in any given time period. Eating induces various metabolic processes. A priori, there is no reason, as far as I can think of at least, that eating more frequently differs from eating the same amount of food less frequently in terms of total metabolic processes involved.

To me, the naive view is like filling a car with fuel: You start off the day with some fuel in the tank and either stop off several times to partially replenish it or you drive all day and then fill it all back up at the end. If you cover the same distance then you will use up roughly the same amount of fuel. Sure, there will be minor differences and you have to take into account things like the fact that you might have to drive a bit further to find extra fuel stations etc. etc. but fundamentally - the total amount of fuel you intake and the total miles covered in both situations are pretty much the same.

Similarly with eating, you can either constantly keep topping yourself up or put a load in a couple of times. I think there are also misconceptions about the actual processes whereby we metabolise food that we eat. For example, pretty much every gram of fat we eat gets stored as fat. The body constantly turns it over - your fat stores are far from constant. It isn't like you eat some fat and burn those actual molecules of fat that day for energy, it may be that those fatty acids are stored and we simultaneously burn some from elsewhere.

In very basic terms, the body has a tremendous ability to maintain homeostasis. This means that it has the capacity to regulate things like blood sugar pretty well (in most cases). So, if you eat, say, a lot of carbs in one meal, much of the sugars released into the blood as stored as glycogen in the liver and muscles and are then released later on as the blood sugars drop. Eating the same amount of carbs spread out over more meals just means that the body uses a slightly different mechanism to anabolise the sugars.

http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110621115952AAV9lHs
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20130403105347AAUjl0A
There will be plenty more
I'm really not the only person who was told that, it's a common thing people tell others when they aren't eating. I'm not trying to say it's true just to disprove the theory you seem to have that I'm an idiot.

Well, in the first link - every answer says the same as we said here - that starving eventually leads to weight gain when you resume normal eating. In the second thread, most people are saying the same thing. Sure, there are a couple of people who seem not to understand it but yahoo answers is a very retarded corner of the web.

In my experience, I have never read or heard people say that starving yourself causes weight gain apart from when there was (at least an implicit) understanding that it most often leads to one losing weight and eventually putting it back on at the cessation of the starvation.

In any case, if people really think that eating less causes weight gain, then in my opinion - they are an idiots. I stand by my comments, if saying something like that was common amongst the people you know then idiocy (or at least fairly extreme ignorance) is common amongst people you know. Sorry, but I consider people who don't understand such a basic principle of human metabolism to be a but backwards.

But I'm not saying that it's true. I'm saying that I DON'T think it's true. In my experience it's something that's said commonly and I laugh at it, because I know it's not true...

Now before anyone jumps at me to say that this is an unhealthy way to lose weight...I KNOW! I'm aware that it's not the best way to lose weight, but i just want to lose weight really quickly at the moment. I'm going to the gym twice/three times a week, so i AM doing exercise.

I'm a UK size 12, not really sure about my weight..probably about 9 or 9 and 1/2 stones. I want to noticeably lose weight fast - i wanted to know by drinking water + going to the gym twice a week + eating one meal a day, how much can i expect to lose? and how quickly?

Has anyone else tried to lose weight by doing this? How did it work out?
If anyone knows of other ways to properly lose weight quickly, then i'm up for listening.

Thanks.