July 3, 2009

The 500 Calorie Diet - Diets For Quick Weight Loss

by Dan Beckwith

Diets for quick weight loss can be very risky. But, do you like to take risks with your health? If so, the 500 calorie diet may be right for you. Even when considering diets for quick weight loss, the 500 calorie diet is an extreme form of dieting. However, it is very popular.

Clearly, the reason for this popularity is that you will quickly lose weight. Almost everyone who has a need for diets for quick weight loss, goes to a low-calorie diet. But even among low-calorie diets, the 500 calories per day diet is at the low end of the spectrum.

1200 calories per day is generally used as the cutoff point to determine a low-calorie diet. In other words, anything below 1200 calories is considered to be a low-calorie diet. Obviously, the whole point to a low-calorie diet is to quickly lose weight. But again, this can’t be over stressed, severely limiting your caloric intake is very dangerous. Any low-calorie diet should be thoroughly planned with your nutritionist and/or your family doctor.

It’s well known that the best way to lose weight is to burn more calories than you eat. You can do this by burning more, or by eating less. Your body needs a certain number of calories just to exist. If you’re not eating enough, the theory is that your energy needs will be taken from the fat calories in your body.

But, keep in mind that your body is very smart. It won’t simply keep burning away calories. Your body will think you are starving, and it will cut way back on the number of calories it uses to survive. This affects your metabolic rate, which means that your body will start eating away at your muscle mass.

This is disastrous over a long-term. Most of our calories are burned by our muscles, so if we lose them, it’s not only bad for our bodies - but it also affects our ability to keep weight off in the future. As one of the diets for quick weight loss, the 500 calorie diet works… but only for a short while.

Your gender, activity level, height, body type, genetics, and overall health will determine how quickly and how badly your body is affected by a 500 calorie per day diet. For short while, 500 calories per day may be enough for some of us.

It’s likely, that you’ve been taking in 2000 to 5000 or more calories per day. Suddenly dropping to 500 will immediately move your body into starvation mode. As it should. For most of us 500 calories per day IS literally starving our bodies. To conserve energy and to help keep you alive, your metabolism will slow way down.

Our bodies are quite adaptable. In a very short time you will learn to survive on 500 calories per day. (At least until you run out of calories to burn…then you’ll go into a coma and die.)

The good news is, we usually stop our dieting before that happens. The bad news is, now that you’ve lost so much muscle mass and your metabolism is so slow, as soon as you go back to your old eating habits (and we all do) you will have a sudden spike in weight gain. In fact you’ll gain more weight than you would have if you had never gone on a diet to start with. Diets for quick weight loss may seem to be very effective, but they just don’t work over the long haul.

The best way to determine a safe, workable daily calorie level is by using a BMR/AMR calculator. This will tell you how many calories you need in order to maintain good health and support your lifestyle. Now, you know how many calories you need and if you subtract up to 500 calories per day you will have one of the ideal diets for quick weight loss.

Obviously, the mass and body size of women is dramatically different than that of men. That means, they need a different number of calories to survive. While the average man may eat 1500 to 1600 calories per day, the average woman may eat only 1200 to 1300 calories per day. You must consult your physician before starting any diet, safety has to come first.

Finally, when it comes to diets for quick weight loss…the 500 calorie per day diet is a popular one. But, keep in mind that it can be very dangerous. Clearly, it will help you to lose weight. But the weight loss is only temporary. It’s going to come right back as soon as you stop the diet. Unless you are under the constant supervision and monitoring of a doctor, you should never cut back your calories that dramatically.

To get your FREE copy of my “Fast Weight Loss Tips!” mini-course, and to learn more about the best ways to lose weight, check out my website right now.

About the Author:

Diets For Quick Weight Loss - The 500 Calorie Diet, is very popular but is only one - and not the safest of the MANY ways to take off weight. I’ve done TONS of weight loss research and have put the safest of the safest secrets, methods and tactics on my website. Check it out right now to get a FREE enrollment of my “Fast Weight Loss secrets!” mini-course…