Avg 800 calories with no ill effects

[random]

OK I eat like crap people I average around 800 Calories a day be it a box of Kraft dinner or a 150 gram bag of potato chips. Somtimes I change over to large salads for awhile or I'll go to KFC. I only eat once a day unless I'm hung over then I cure it with Chocolate milk and pizza pops a couple times a day. I take ginseng and a few sexual health herbs so anyway............Modern science says a person needs 2000 calories a day to live and less is going to lead to weight loss. I walk everyday maybe a few kilometres more if it's nice so........I'm about 150-160 lb 5 ft 10 and I know it's not healthy but I'm doing fine so why is this? All medical science I have read says 800 calories is a starvation diet. And mine, because of the potato chips is pretty high in fat that much is certain not valuable nutrition.

 

I am going to switch to healthier foods because I have a small tire I need to flatten out but I feel with modern nutritional science it shouldn't matter, With only 800 on average calories per day I should be thin as a rail regardless of nutritional value.

[Marat]

The problem with a starvation diet is that your body will start to break down its own tissues for nutrition, which will produce a variety of metabolic side-effects that are not good for you. Also, it can damage tissues that are important to your overall health and strength. To avoid these problems, the normal rule in hospitals is that a patient your size should be on strict bed rest with 900 kcal/day, not up and walking around. If you want to lose weight you are correct in assuming that it is calorie restriction, not exercise, which is the key to success, but try something less extreme.

 

It has also been noted that cultures which regularly underfeed themselves, like the residents of certain islands off the coast of Japan, have a much longer than normal life expectancy. This is consist with experiments on mice in the 1950s, which showed that mice fed starvation diets before reaching maturity lived longer.

 

For no particular reason other than saving time and being somewhat eccentric, I used to go for up to four days in a row without eating when I was a student. I found that I actually felt slightly better than normal for the first two days after beginning my fast, though by the fourth day I began to lose my ability to concentrate, which was not much help in studying. I have always had a BMI between 18 and 20, so I am not much of an eater even under normal circumstances.

[John Cuthber]

" I average around 800 Calories a day"

I doubt that.

[random]

" I average around 800 Calories a day"

I doubt that.

 

 

Well it's true at least 5 out of 7 days I eat a bag of Uncle Ray's potato chips about 150 grams which is slightly less than 800 calories or a box of Kraft dinner the other days vary I could eat a 3 piece meal at KFC could eat a half pound of bacon on 2 white bread sandwich's could eat a medium delissio pizza who knows. These I know are pretty calorie dense so I would have to agree that there is "carry over" calories to some degree but most day's it's 800 calories.

[John Cuthber]

Do you realise that yours is an extraordinary claim and therefore requires extraordinary evidence?

[Marat]

If you go for a long time on such a low caloric intake without apparent or measured weight loss, you should consider the possibility of fluid accumulation compensating for body tissue weight loss. Since the kidneys only stay healthy if the subject keeps them operating by eating (they are one of the first organs to start to fail when people undergo hunger strikes), if your kidneys are starting to shut down because of malnutrition they will lose their capacity to excrete fluids, causing fluid weight to build up in your body, which will make it seem as though you are not losing 'real' weight by your limited diet.

 

If you want to lose weight safely and effectively, there is one diet I have always found successful in overweight patients. Let them eat anything and everything they want every other day, but on the days in between allow them to eat nothing. Their willpower is never exhausted, since they always know they can eat as much as they want by just waiting a day, but they never eat enough on the eating days to compensate for the loss of calories on the fasting days, so they lose weight. In practice such a diet usually amounts to a reduction in caloric intake of about 30% to 40%, since satiety sets in to limit over-consumption on the eating days.

[Pantaz]

Got me wondering about how many calories we burn at rest. Found a chart of basic daily activities here.

 

Looked a little deeper and came across a nice, simple article on calories and metabolism -- http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/metabolism/WT00006

 

Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) calculator

[blunderbuss]

I only eat once a day unless I'm hung over

 

Are you adding the calories for the substance that's causing the hangover?

[lawljj]

The reason you don't feel any ill effects is probably because you spread out your eating over the course of the day.