500-calorie-a-day Diet

You may have heard of a few weight watchers and some severely obese weight loss candidates (and probably, even a few harebrained celebrities) having adopted this diet which allows as less as 500 calories in a day, and having achieved excellent results in the process. That may very well be true (I am not doubting the integrity of those people, nor am I questioning the efficacy of this particular diet). What I am doing, is setting about the task of enlightening you about certain aspects of this particular diet, which you may not be aware of, or may have undermined.

The 500-Calorie-a-Day Diet Explained
Okay, I will neither beat around the bush, nor will I limit my words and do injustice to the subject. The 500-calorie-a-day diet is one diet plan that you should stay away from. Far, far away from. Avoid it like the plague. Now if that made your eyes pop out of their eyeballs, then that's good. Because it means that I now have your complete and undivided attention.

Now listen up. Diets and diet plans are a dime a dozen, there's no doubt about that. In fact, every Tom, Diet and Harry (another deliberate attempt to test your attention) keeps coming up with some new, revolutionary diet or diet plan every other fortnight. At the same time, it has also become quite fashionable (almost a social need) for a person to attend a social gathering and declare loudly, that the reason why she lost oodles of weight was because of the latest abracadabra diet, which was nothing short of a Godsend, simply because she succeeded in losing weight, while all her other friends struggled with their pointless 'outdated' diets. If in such a scenario, someone ends up convincing you to adopt the 500-calorie-a-day diet, please, for the sake of your own good health, unconvince yourself! (wrong word, right sentiment).

Dangers
So why am I keeping you away from this particular diet, you may ask. Well, here are the reasons. If you are an overweight person, you should definitely lose weight; there are no two ways about that. But the resultant weight loss should be a HEALTHY weight loss. What that means is, that the reduction in body weight and body fat should NOT come at the cost of your own health and overall well-being. And that is precisely what will be at stake, should you decide to adopt the 500-calorie-a-day diet plan.

500 calories a day is simply NOT enough for the human body, regardless of whether you are a skinny person or a balloon of fat. Your body's daily nutritional requirement in terms of calories is much more than that (putting a single universal figure is not practical, because it varies from person to person). However, most dietitians and nutrition experts agree that a bare minimum calorie intake of around 1000-1200 is a must (even if the person is on a weight loss diet).

This diet may very well help you in achieving massive weight loss in a very short span of time, but it can be quite harmful in the long run. It can severely deprive your body of essential nutrients. Worse, it can 'trick' your body into believing that it is being led towards malnutrition, starvation and famine. What the body does in such circumstances, is hold on tightly to all its fat reserves (in the belief that it will not be fed in the near future). This makes it all the more difficult to lose weight. In the process, all that you end up 'gaining' is nothing but severe hunger, fatigue, exhaustion, and God-knows-what-else.

If achieving quick weight loss via dieting is your target, then a good amount of exercise combined with a 1200-calorie-diet plan can be a good option and more importantly, a safer option to consider. Wishing you all the very best with your weight loss! Make it a healthy one! Take care!