Monday, August 20, 2012

Ban 1200 calorie diets

This article really makes me mad:

http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/does-1-200-calorie-day-look-173600166.html

No one should ever be put on a 1200 calorie diet. Low calorie diets are extremely dangerous.

People are overweight, because they overeat. Putting them on a restrictive food plan is stupid. The remedy for overeating is eating normally, not going anorexic.

People lose weight better on a maintenance level food plan, because the metabolism keeps working. A 1200 calorie diet, particularly if done repeatedly, will shut down the metabolistm and make it virtually impossible to lose weight.

Medical professionals who recommend 1200 calorie diets should lose their licenses to practice. This type of diet is one cause of the obesity epidemic.

Restricting also leads to starve/binge eating patterns. After a period of feeling deprived, people will almost inevitably binge. If you binge with your body in a low metabolism, storage mode induced by a 1200 calorie diet, the result of the binge will be converted to fat much more readily.  This leads to the well-known effect of yo-yo dieting, which is weight gain.

Moreover, for super morbidly obese people, it takes a long time for the body to burn off the fat. If they are on a 1200 calorie diet for an extended period of time, they can die of an anorexia induced heart attack long before they get to normal weight.

It is time for all right thinking people to roundly denounce the 1200 calorie diet.

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