The body turns all excess calories into fat, regardless of the source. There’s no miracle food you can eat too much of and not get fat. Atkins doesn’t help lose weight if you’re eating 5000 calories a day.
I’m not a nutritionist, but after reading a whole bunch of stuff about all of the metabolic pathways:
My takeaway is that your body can and will turn anything into anything that it wants to.
Having then gone on to read a bunch about cell receptors, antagonists, agonists, etc. the way I now describe your body is as Earth. Like, we view our body like a car, with some major parts that do some basic functions, and maybe there’s some fine tuning per part, but overall that’s about the sum of it. But no, the body is like Earth, with millions of businesses all interacting together, each doing something slightly different, picking up resources here, smashing them together, pulling them apart, shipping them around, and so on. Literally just millions of things and billions of products being shipped around. When we talk about the supply chain of building a Toyota Prius, with lithium coming from Argentina, to go to a battery factory in Taiwan, to ship to Japan for basic manufacturing, to go into final assembly in Mexico, to be sold at a dealer in your town…that’s what the insides of your body are like. And for every Toyota, there’s a Ford, a BMW, etc. and all of the other businesses in all of the other industries. For example, look at the pathways in the body that interact with epidermal growth factor, which is just one of a few dozen growth factors, which are just a tiny subset all of the human body’s internal chemistry:
http://msb.embopress.org/content/1/1/2005.0010
But anyways…
Getting into IMHO terrotiry, I’d say that you’re better off to think along two broad pathways:
- Basic physics. It’s physically impossible to gain weight if you’re burning 2000 calories a day and only eating 1000 calories; if the body can’t process something, then you don’t need to worry about what it will get converted into; etc.
- If your problem is that you’re eating 4000 calories of hamburgers every day - which would be crazy - then trying to solve it by doing one insane thing to exhaustion is also crazy. The key to health is sanity, not countering craziness with craziness. Eat a balanced diet. Get exercise. Don’t eat huge portions. Remove crazy and that will solve your issues.
I assume you’re trying to lose weight.
Previous posters have given helpful advice, so I’ll just try a quick summary (I’m dieting myself with help from my doctor.)
- No loss of weight works in the long run unless you change your habits (e.g. relentless snacking.)
- No drastic dieting works (you just put the weight back on when you stop.) You must lose weight steadily and slowly. In a years time, aim to weigh less and have better habits (both diet and exercise.)
- You should have a combination of eating a bit less, eating healthier and exercising a bit more.
- You can’t give up everything you love - you will soon drop off the diet.
In my case (I’m 65):
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I’ve given up crisps (N.B. US = chips.) They taste delicious (particularly barbecue beef and smokey bacon), but are full of fat, salt and sugar. :mad:
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I only eat chips (N.B. US = fries) once a week. I eat jacket potatoes instead.
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I’ve given up ice-cream for yoghurts. Fortunately my body is satisfied by this.
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I only drink diet soft drinks.
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I still allow myself chocolate (got to have a treat.
) I keep it in the fridge and eat one bit at a time so that it tastes even better plus I can’t just snack on a whole bar. -
I walk regularly.
Good luck to you!
I love Sage Rat’s metaphors of the body. But I was expecting a different conclusion, like “Whether protein turns to fat depends on a whole bunch of factors…”
Let me rephrase. Do you guys consider these 2 articles to have any weight? This is crazy!
Protein Will Not Make You Fat
Quote: While it’s biochemically possible for protein to turn into fat by ingesting extremely high numbers of calories or extremely large amounts of protein, it’s unlikely you’ll ever be in that situation. You can pretty much eat as much protein as you want and it won’t turn to fat.
Can Too Much Protein Make You Fat?
Quote: Yes, your body can transform the calories from excess protein into fat. However, no study has conclusively shown how much protein you can eat before your body starts changing that protein to fat… a number of studies have researched what happens when people eat lots of protein, and none of those studies reported changes in body fat composition.
The articles don’t make sense because they’re giving a technical description instead of a plain-speak one.
Eating protein doesn’t make you fat. Eating fat doesn’t make you fat. Eating carbs doesn’t make you fat.
Eating a LOT makes you fat.
So at extremely large quantities of X, you will start forming fat. But most people don’t eat extremely large quantities of food - mostly just those who are morbidly obese - so you’re unlikely to ever be in that position (as the first article says). And at that point it’s not an issue that you’re eating X, it’s that you’re eating a whole LOT of X.
Your body will think it is starving, and your metabolism will slow down. When you start eating more food, you will gain weight, sometimes on as little as 1000 a day.
Two things will raise your metabolism: eating enough and exercising. On 500 a day, you are not going to feel like exercising. If you eat 1,500 calories a day and walk outside at least an hour every day, you have a much better chance of losing weight and keeping it off.
It’s a “Catch 22” situation. When you starve your body, your body reacts by slowing down your metabolism as much as possible, so you burn way fewer calories than you would if you were active. In addition, another reaction of your body is to crave food because it’s starving, so you suffer and eventually rebel. When that happens, you gain everything back and often even more. That’s why those fad crash diets ultimately fail.
Barring some kind of medical problem that is causing overweight, the best way to lose weight is to eat foods that are LOW in FAT and SUGAR. Exercise “portion control”. No, you don’t need to eat a medium pizza by yourself. Eat half or a third instead. As your stomach shrinks, you can slowly reduce portions to a healthy size. Along with that, EXERCISE. A brisk thirty minute walk every day will not only burn about 500 calories, it will increase your metabolism so that your body will burn more calories naturally.
OP, this. Your questions are of concern. You should not be asking about starvation diets, or what an isolated food source might do to you.
If you are overweight, that is enough of a problem without developing an eating disorder to go with it.
Actually, there is a very odd diet called the ketogenic diet, that is meant to deliberately force the brain to burn ketones instead of glucose. It’s a diet that is proportionately high in fat, absent any simple sugars, and low in calories altogether. People on it have to take supplements. It’s intended for people, mostly children, with intractable epilepsy-- epilepsy that doesn’t respond to medication. It sounds like quackery, but it’s actually standard medicine, and I’ve seen it used-- and work. I saw a 14-year-old who was having 2-3 seizures a day, even while on barbiturates and Tegretol, go to maybe 1 seizure a month, about two months into the diet, and eventually her medicine was cut by 75%. They say if she had started it when she was 7 or 8, instead of 14, she could have been seizure-absent with no medication. I was skeptical at first, but this really is standard medical practice.
That’s how I remember it. They gave us a mini-seminar, sort of, on this in the Army, because they want us to eat (then they don’t give us time to do it, but nevermind). We’re burning about 4000 calories a day in Basic, and they want to make sure everyone is eating enough, so we get a little scare class.
The one thing-- if something is missing from your diet, it comes out of your body before fat, so if your diet is protein-deficient, you will metabolize your muscle tissue before fat to have protein to support your organs. But as long as you are getting sufficient nutrients, a calorie deficit will be made up for from your fat stores.
Death.
Most commonly from ventricular arrhythmia. Happened fairly often in the early days of very low calorie diets.
Vey carefully designed with very tight medical supervision versions of very low calorie diets can be done fairly safely but even then there are risks. Weight loss rate also flattens out very quickly and regain is very common, as in almost always.
I wish! According to this page, for 160lb person and at 4 mph, it would take about 4.5 miles to burn 500 calories. That is about 65-70 minutes.
Thanks for that! I actually didn’t think it was a strictly 1,2,3, process, but rather that it was a constant adjustment between the levels, as the body tries to maintain optimum storage at each level.
But, it’s interesting that the brain has very specific needs for what kinds of energy it uses, and that this may result in loss of muscle protein, long before all fat reserves are gone.
I was reading something else and encountered this article, FWIW.
I’ve done it before, for unhealthy reasons.
For the first few days, you’ll be hungry, of course. But you will not feel all that bad. Just a little lightheaded. You may even feel completely healthy and fine for up to two weeks.
But then it tends to go downhill. You will become tired and lethargic. You’ll also have chills, per chance. Like a fever, but you can’t get rid of it. You’ll really become lightheaded. You will also become very irritable, and get mad and frustrated at everything, regardless if it is a part of your personality or not.
Within the first two months or so, gastrointestinal problems will ensue. You may find yourself not having a bowel movement in a while, which causes bloating and discomfort. By this point, if you’ve been eating foods low in sugar, as one usually does when they crash diet like this (sweet things tend to have more calories), you may dip into hypoglycemia.
As time goes on, you’re going to run into more problems than you think. Rapid weight loss isn’t worth it with the multitude of things that come with it. Languo (fine hair everywhere, even the face). And you’ll even start loosing the hair on your head. You may start passing out; become anemic. By now, a majority of your lungs are already ruined. Your body is most likely eating away at the muscle. Give it 2 or three years, and you’ll die by a heart attack, if not sooner.
Yes, your body does use fat for energy. The only problem is that there is no nutrition in fat. There are no vitamins or minerals or electrolytes that your body needs to function. Anorexics usually eat 500 calories a day… and look where most end up…
Crash diets are fine. Such as, loose a few pounds in 5 days to fit in that dress. But long term; no. It is not safe.
Cite? Many sources on google say that your body does indeed store fat soluble vitamins. Do you have a credible source that contradicts this?
I’ve done 1,000 calories/day for 6 months and lost 80 lbs. I kept the weight off for almost 5 years before I went through several life changes that got me out of the good habits I developed. I’m currently back in a good situation and I’m planning on 3 months of 1,000/day to get me back into the range that I can lose weight comfortably at 2,400 calories per day.
The secrets to success are a multi vitamin and if needed a calcium supplement, working out for an hour each day even if its a simple as taking a walk in the morning, you can’t let being tired beat you, and then getting your calories from protein and vegetable sources. Like I said I’m currently doing this and I’m eating 4-8 oz of lean meat each day and then the rest is leafy green vegetables. I get really hungry right before meal time but most of the day I’m fine but I also make sure I’m drinking lots of water to help stay full typically in the 6-8 L of water per day. I’m over 400 lbs.
If you were going for 500 calories it will be harder to get the right amount of protein and so I’d look into the protein supplements mentioned above and in general your nutrition will be mostly coming in pill form with the 500 calories mostly being about keeping you sane. My wife tried 1,000 calories/day a couple of years ago and even though she’s under 200 lbs she couldn’t handle being hungry all of the time. You definitely need to be a bit crazy for it work.
I’d also suggest talking with a doc both before and after so you can make sure your body is up for the rigors you’re going to put it through and once you’re done that you can heal up the damage you did.
If you want to survive on 500 calories, you could lop some limbs off, that would also provide drastic weight loss.
Nitpick: People living on a ketogenic diet do just fine with essentially no carbs, and only dietary fat. There are some body chemistry changes that occur when you’re getting no carbs, and the brain learns to function on ketones..
Whether it’s healthy to survive on 500 calories a day for very long, I can’t say, but my gut feeling is that you’ll feel wretched at best, and long-term might do yourself some real harm.
Oops, a duplicate post