How Dieting Can Screw You Up

Well, ^that's^ not the way the article puts it, but it's how I will put it, because it is what happened to me when I dieted hard for too long, and didn't understand what I was doing.

This post is a great explanation of how your body responds to dieting, put in terms of females and lifting progress. If you don't lift, it still applies to your sport. If you have no sport, it's still helpful knowledge - most especially as the new year kicks off and so do millions of diets.

If you want to diet, that's your choice - but read this to understand the importance of keeping your calorie restriction small, not massive.

Otherwise, your foolishness may come back and smash you upside the head so hard that you'll be a pile of tears in the corner, for years. (That was me.) (It sucked.) (Don't do it.)

While a slight caloric deficit should cause sustainable weight loss (think 300-500 calories per day), much larger deficits elicit changes in your metabolism to keep your body in an energy balance and maintain homeostasis. The body—this dynamic, adaptable machine—wants to feel “safe.” With survival as the priority, it is constantly regulating what’s going on in response to our environment.

In other words, in order to conserve energy and direct calories to necessary functions for survival, your body resorts to burning fewer calories, even as you’re exercising regularly and intensely. This means you will hold onto body fat despite eating a low-calorie diet and training hard.

Find all the #science here: http://www.girlsgonestrong.com/undereating/

EMPHATIC ADVICE: Even a "slight" 300-500 calorie deficit may be too much for some. If I am 500 calories down on a regular basis, I turn into a puddle right quick. Even 300 is pushing it for this delicate flower. "Your mileage will vary" is perhaps the most important line in the article - take it to heart, and always start on the conservative end of intake, not the dramatic end. In my experience, the dramatic end is where all the tears happen.

MORE EMPHATIC ADVICE: Forget the "ideal weight" calculator she's linked. Don't even click on it; you don't need another number to make you feel badly about where you are. Weight is just one factor among MANY to show your health status, and it's one we all need to stop obsessing over. Just figure out roughly how many calories you're eating now, and adjust from there.