Okay, just so you know, I'm not starving myself. I just want to know something. I heard that you can lose or gain weight from eating less than like, 1000 calories. I just want to know which one is true. Do you lose or gain weight when you starve yourself?
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Starving kids get a big swollen belly because they get diseases caused by malnutrition and lack of protein which causes edema (fluid retention) so their internal organs swells.If you starve, your body, that great adaptable system, adapts differently at different times so it might look different but it's the same process, just one result creates another problem that can trigger a different result and several causes have several consequences, all at the same time, so it gets confusing. It's like a progression with different end results depending on the duration. The process is about the same but the result will be different as you don't end up at the same place in time if you eat less for 10 days because you have the flu, or for 6 weeks because you have a bad case of the whooping cough, or for 3 months because you have a more serious disease, or for a longer time if you eat less to “lose weight” and develop an ED that will either kill you (starvation) or you'll spend the rest of your lifetime dealing with it. Getting the flu or whooping cough are physical illnesses while an ED becomes a Mental Disorder.Technically, a low calories diet makes your body adapts to it and, in a way, becoming more efficient as using calories better so you don't need that many anymore. It's a blessing for the 2 billions of people on Earth who don't have access to enough food…not so good for dieters who resume eating normally and get fatter than ever.You have to understand the differences between body fat gain/loss, muscle mass gain/loss, bone mass gain/loss, huge water fluctuations, food/waste gain/loss, etc…as often people don't really have to lose total body weight on a scale, just get thinner (losing inches of body measurements), toner, fitter, stronger, looking fit and healthy, by losing body fat with aerobics and gaining muscle mass with weight training (muscle mass takes 3 times less space than body fat for the same weight). If they even have extra body fat to lose, the extra high maintenance added muscle mass, once they're fit, will devour it.Let's just takes one simple example (not that it's ever that simple):IF you starve, you lose body weight at first as logically, you lose the food weight that you should have eaten but did not, you also lose the waste weight of that missing food (obviously), you lose A LOT of water weight as it's hard to not dehydrate if you don't eat the food that would help you retain enough water. Some people do that just to lose weight which is pointless since those are temporary weight loss that you should re-gain as soon as you resume eating normally.THEN if you don't get better, you get a lower metabolism because you don't have to digest the food that you do not eat.Your body adapts to low calories diet by lowering your metabolism within 10 days.THEN, because you do not eat enough to even cover your BMR (+ growth if -21yo), you cannot be physically active as you do not eat more to get more energy to exercise easily and efficiently, like fit people do (especially if your low calorie diet is the result of being sick and you're weak having to deal with the flu or something and not about to go for a jog). THEN, being sedentary brings a myriad of other consequences, like because you do not eat enough, your metabolism goes down and because you cannot exercise, you don't burn the calories you would normally burn with physically activity.ALSO, that's a doozy…your marvelously adaptable body will recycle your muscle mass into body fat (your body storage system) pretty fast, if you stop exercising (muscle mass is a “use it or lose it system) OR if you don't eat enough to maintain it OR both. Think of it this way…your body is looking after you and if you don't eat enough, it will do you a favor by recycling your muscle mass into fat reserves…first because you don't eat enough so you cannot get enough energy to keep exercising so you cannot maintain your muscle mass with physical activities, second because muscle mass is high maintenance (35-50 calories/day for each pound) so you don't have to worry about having to eat more to maintain it if you lose it, since you don't eat enough, third, because your muscle mass becoming fat reserves will provide you with the fat reserves you need but cannot get because you don't eat enough but still you have to survive…however low your metabolism went down the drain, by digesting less, not exercising, not having to maintain muscle mass.That's the phase when people not eating enough starts to look fatter as they go up a dress size, gain inches on their body measurements (as body fat takes 3 times more space than muscle mass), get skinny-fat (NWO: Normal Weight Obese, like 90-130lbs of a soft weak body) with a belly pouch, get a high BFP, look in the mirror and one third of their body if body fat so they get BDD and ED.
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- Both, have you noticed that some i repeat some African kids have a little bloated looking belly? Its because they don't eat. But also people can lose weight as well. My bf used to starve himself and would lose weight fast so it can go either way. He doesn't anymore though.
- U will lose muscle and fatAnd sometimes u might end up with that skinny fat look and that's terrible