6 ms·

The amount of calories per day caught my attention, 850kcal/day with diet replacement products. I understand that with medical supervision, there is less risk o

The amount of calories per day caught my attention, 850kcal/day with diet replacement products. I understand that with medical supervision, there is less risk of malnourishment or nutrients deficiencies. The general advice, even from my primary care physician, has been that anything less than 1200kcal/day is dangerous and is crash dieting. Looking around, I found this other study studying total diet replacement providing 810kcal/day as the sole food for 12 weeks, showed significantly greater weight loss compared to standard counseling and modest energy restrictions. The difference in weight loss was measured at 12 months. (BMJ 2018;362:k3760 [1]) 25 BMI, which the diabetes study used in addition to T2D, is not considered clinically obese in the US. 25 BMI is the line between clinically normal and overweight. I wonder if crash dieting is advised against on the assumption that most people will go back to unhealthy eating habits instead of changing their diet, and also become more likely to fall into binge-restrict cycles. It's easy to imagine that if someone is able to make meaningful changes, crash dieting is more effective than most other methods. [1] https://www.bmj.com/content/362/bmj.k3760 https://www.bmj.com/content/362/bmj.k3760

selimthegrim 4y ago
For South Asians there has been debate about setting lower BMI breakpoints
wincy 4y ago
Interesting, when I lost 80 pounds doing a ketogenic diet my appetite leveled off at exactly 1200 calories per day. I wasn’t counting calories out of anything other than curiosity as I was losing weight anyway. Getting even lower would have been pretty difficult.
- mmmpop 4y ago
  I did a lot of ketogenic diets when I was younger in an attempt to shed all of the weight that comes with being raised in Appalachia. It was my experience that it was a great kickstart to a weight-loss plan for someone who was at rock-bottom health and needed fast results while not feeling like you're starving. But I feel like it taught me to be bored with eating, and to establish a more healthy relationship with food. High-fat, mid-protein, low-carb sounds terrific for the first day or two but once you're two weeks in, you're so sick of it all that you'd just as soon drink some water and get back to whatever you're doing.
  - wincy 4y ago
    Well I mean it worked for me because if I eat sugar I end up consuming something on the order of 4000+ calories per day. Something about carbohydrates makes me absolutely ravenous for sugars. Also if I don’t eat right as I feel hungry I’ll feel as if someone has gut punched me. I get absurdly hungry.
    - JamesianP 4y ago
      Even artificial sweetener leads to craving carbs in my case. As for the "gut punch" though, sounds like gastritis or something. Unless you're being metaphorical. For me, water helps when I'm fasting and stomach pains start.
      - matthewdgreen 4y ago
        This feeling is so intense for me that I’ve come to believe it’s something to do with the carbs and my gut microbiome changing. There’s a 1-2 week delay between changing diets and having these hunger pains start/stop that makes this feel more credible to me than insulin response changes or diet boredom. But: one should not treat N=1 subjective experiences as having any real value.
        syntheweave 4y ago
        My "hunger pain" is tied to the some combination of the gut biome and the blood sugar cycle. It initially insists that I should eat frequently. If I persist through it, then an hour or two later, it settles down. Likewise, I've noticed an effect develop with artificial sweeteners where I can have small amounts without difficulty, but if I start consuming it several times in a 48 hour span, I get cramps. In periods where I've become addicted to carbs hunger pain is much stronger, but I've been able to keep it down for many years now. So if you're getting it intensely, your gut is probably still reactivating to its old profile. I believe restriction in the regular diet is one way of correcting it while staying in a routine. But I have also experimented with fasting, intense exercise, hot/cold contrast in the shower, and breathing exercises, and the common theme to each is to challenge homeostasis in some fashion. Obviously there's always some danger in going too far, but if our norm is total comfort, we can definitely drop some aspect of it from time to time.
xboxnolifes 4y ago
> The general advice, even from my primary care physician, has been that anything less than 1200kcal/day is dangerous and is crash dieting. Wouldn't this advise need to keep in mind absolute height? BMI tracks the ratio between the height and weight, but it does nothing to tell the difference between a short thin person and a taller heavier (but same BMI) person. The latter which would need more calories than the former. I know people who eat ~400 kcal less than me per day, because they are shorter and similarly thinner. Following that why wouldn't their crash diet threshold be sufficiently lower?
- maximus-decimus 4y ago
  The argument I've heard is that the other nutriments needs (vitamins, minerals, etc) don't scale as much with height. So even a very short person would have a vitamins/mineral deficit on less than 1200KCal per day. How true is it? I don't know. But even then I don't see why they couldn't take multivitamins.
  - throwaway09223 4y ago
    Many American diets are calorie/energy rich and nutrient poor. If you're eating 400 calories of healthy food you're probably getting several times the vitamins and minerals of the average American eating 2500 of fried, sugary food. It's probably a mistake to connect the two.
    - dragontamer 4y ago
      Beef is very nutrient rich. Yes, we Americans overeat beef / Hamburgers, but I don't think anyone eating burgers is at huge risk of malnutrition... as much as a risk of heart problems, diabetes, cholesterol, etc. etc. It turns out that a standard burger with beef, ketchup, lettuce, onion, and bread covers most of your macro, and even micro-nutrients. It also is way overboard on salt and fats, but... that's not the particular problem here. One of the bigger problems vegetarians have is finding a proper replacement of meat and all of the easy nutrients meat contains. All amino acids, various vitamins, iron, etc. etc. There's a fair amount of nutrients here. And even the worst McDonalds burger contains a variety of lettuce / onions / ketchup that covers few nutrients that beef is missing (ex: Ketchup has Vitamin A, Potatoes / Fries has Vitamin C).
sacnoradhq 4y ago
Evidence needed: define "dangerous" in terms of micromorts based on what BMR and demographics (i.e., age, BMI, FFMI, height, gender)? There are risks to ponder about how critical (e.g., time vs. dangers) it is to get to a healthy weight. If someone dangerously obese maintains hydration, electrolytes, vitamins, and enough lipids to empty the gallbladder, getting to a low adipose tissue state, resetting insulin, ghrelin, and leptin sensitivities, and reducing the likelier risks of cancer(s) seems like a good tradeoff than either lap-band surgery or slow/plateau weight reductions. Intense hunger goes away after about 72-80 hours of "starvation", however brain fog and low energy dominate. Careful "starvation" dieting down to slightly underweight isn't something one can do without several months of spare time, ready access to healthcare, and immense self-control. Afterwards, self-control is absolutely required to avoid binge cycles. GLP-1 agonists are expensive but interesting crutches to get there slowly. It is likely that over millions of years of natural selection, the human body is far more tolerant of borderline starvation conditions than being stuffed with HFCS. Many types of cancers associated with Western diets are likely due to the human body becoming more hospitable, whereas chemotherapy and starvation add cellular stress that kills off malfunctioning cells. It's likely no accident whereas CHD, gout, diabetes, high cholesterol, and cancers are the consequent of unnatural diets and lifestyles.
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  > GLP-1 agonists are expensive but interesting crutches to get there slowly. Why stop at getting rid of glucose? Add some plasma donations and orlistat. Now you've got balanced macro loss! (don't do this)
  - sacnoradhq 4y ago
    I was thinking about grafting on a rapidly-dividing, malignant neoplasm. (I actually donate whole blood and platelets often.) If someone were carrying around an extra 250 Mcal in adipose tissue, multiple factors determine what their risk budget could/should be to downsize to a suitable homeostatic state.
browningstreet 4y ago
David Goggins lost 100 lbs in 3 months on an 800ish calorie diet. I’m not recommending that… but what you can accomplish when you own it versus doing it for other reasons is probably significant too. Especially for when the “diet” (or whatever word is preferred, a la “intervention”) ends. I lost 60 lbs over a couple of years and set a state lifting record for my age group. I love what I do and kept the excess weight off. I got good at what I do and the intrinsic reward still burns, even though I’m not lifting for records anymore. I wake up every day ready to go hard for at least 50 minutes. It doesn’t take me more time than that to stay in shape, but I do eat consistent with my goals.. which is the harder part. I personally think someone needs to really own their desired outcome and then there are many valid and healthy ways — and even more “effective” ones — to get there. Hard to measure “own” though. Measuring every different kind of modality is generally missing the point. We actually know how people get in shape and stay in shape. The problem is generally in the mind.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- syrrim 4y ago
  100 lbs in three months is ~1lb/day, thus a deficiency of 3500Cal/day. His maintenance intake would have been 4300Cals/day. That seems insanely high - what was his weight?
  - browningstreet 4y ago
    He started north of 275 lbs if I remember. He was working out 3x a day. There are lots of videos out there about it. He was also overweight when he started, and he was going into hell week (military) so the first n lbs of weight would come off “easy”.
  - MerelyMortal 4y ago
    It was 297lbs Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=GdHW1YipmVo https://youtube.com/watch?v=GdHW1YipmVo
MuffinFlavored 4y ago
dumb question: how easy is it for the average person to go from an “American” diet high in addictive things like bad fats, corn syrups, processed foods, etc. etc. to a “clean” 1200kcal diet? I was under the impression it was like trying to fight drug addiction and the chances of you sustaining it and not relapsing/making up the missed calories later as near impossible for most once you’ve become addicted enough to things like Diet Coke, Chik-Fil-A, etc.
- mensetmanusman 4y ago
  Limit yourself to one meal per day; use caffeine as hunger suppression. The one meal per day limit makes it hard to over/eat.
  - nradov 4y ago
    Eating only one meal a day is not optimal from a protein standpoint. The current research indicates that at least two meals would be better. https://peterattiamd.com/donlayman/ https://peterattiamd.com/donlayman/
    - mensetmanusman 4y ago
      It might not be optimal, depending on what you are optimizing for. E.g. one meal is better for daytime alertness in my case.
- BirAdam 4y ago
  I lost about 50 pounds in ~3 months simply by cutting my carb intake to about 20g/day (eating just non-starchy vegetables, meats, sugarless dairy). This was moving from an “American” diet overnight to an extremely low carb diet. My caloric intake actually went up slightly. As for being difficult… yeah. The transition sucked. Body aches, headache, and very slight case of the blues. It took willpower. After about 3 days, I was okay. It was similar to quitting smoking for me, except that quitting smoking didn’t give me body aches.
- andrekandre 4y ago
midhhhthrow 4y ago
Going on less than 200 calorie diets for days or even weeks on end was the norm in humanity for millions of years so how is it unhealthy all the sudden? It was a time of constant mass feast and famine alternating from one to other. The problem now is we have the feast part down pat but no famine
- chrisfosterelli 4y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature Being the norm historically does not imply it is healthy or optimal, only that it is at least survivable on average.
- harry8 4y ago
  In general something being normal for humans for millennia does not mean it was healthy. It was normal to have incredibly painful teeth, probably not healthy. It was normal to die before reaching adulthood. It is entirely possible that something that was done for a long time is a healthy thing just as it is entirely possible that it was a terrible thing that we conquered with knowledge and abundance. Evidence is what tells you if the thing falls into one of those categories. I like living in a time where we are outraged if children in our community die and in cases where there was nothing that could have been done we want to do research to find something we can do in the future. That was not normal for millennia until really very recently and it seems healthy to me?
  - remarkEon 4y ago
    > It was normal to have incredibly painful teeth, probably not healthy. Is this actually true? I thought archaic humans had much better dental outcomes because their diets had a small fraction of the sugars that modern diets do. Could be wrong but I was definitely under the impression that poor dental health was more a function of modern diet and not something that necessarily existed throughout history.
    - harry8 4y ago
      I'm no expert, this could be wrong, what I was told by an ancient historian was even the Pharohs with all their wealth had terrible painful teeth from sand in food which was ubiquitous until fairly recently. I have recollections of dental records of pre-historic persons being reported as pretty nasty. Feel free to nit-pick that example, there are an absolute plethora of others. When did surviving appendicitis become a thing? What was the median life expectancy for a newborn baby at various times in history? Calling out the fetishism of humans in a "natural state" needs to be done. Just as there are things we can learn from our pre-historic existence. Evidence is obviously the required thing not just amusing anecdote about how we have totally "lost our way."
ForrestN 4y ago
My doctors have always said that losing weight too quickly results in the metabolization of one's muscles and other important, healthy tissue in addition to fat. Could it be that crash dieting works narrowly to solve, for example, diabetes via the loss of fat, but has other negative consequences for the body? Maybe it's not a "doesn't work" thing, but a "collateral damage" thing or a "makes it harder to keep the weight off" thing, which is another old saw of why you shouldn't lose weight too fast?
- nradov 4y ago
  Weight loss always involves some loss of lean tissue in addition to fat. Dieters can mitigate this to an extent by protein intake high and maintaining an exercise program.
  - radu_floricica 4y ago
    And sleep. It's rarely mentioned, but the difference between good and bad sleep may mean the difference of 80/20 fat/muscle loss, and 20/80. If the numbers are true (I know of at least one study, but no meta stuff) it means that crash dieting with bad sleep is actually counter productive, as you lose a lot more muscle than fat.
refurb 4y ago
“Dangerous”? How? I mean if you have some pre-existing disease sure. If you’re on certain diuretics you may screw up your blood chemistry, but an otherwise healthy, overweight person eating less than 1200 kcal/day? Maybe not the most efficient way to lose weight but it’s far from “dangerous”.
gip 4y ago
A proven treatment to reverse type 2 diabetes make use of the keto diet, a low carbs diet (not low cal) which may be less risky. For most patients with T2D, doctor supervision is advised. One company working to reverse diabetes in the US is https://www.virtahealth.com/ https://www.virtahealth.com/ (disclaimer: I work there).

selimthegrim 4y ago

For South Asians there has been debate about setting lower BMI breakpoints

wincy 4y ago

Interesting, when I lost 80 pounds doing a ketogenic diet my appetite leveled off at exactly 1200 calories per day. I wasn’t counting calories out of anything other than curiosity as I was losing weight anyway. Getting even lower would have been pretty difficult.

mmmpop 4y ago
I did a lot of ketogenic diets when I was younger in an attempt to shed all of the weight that comes with being raised in Appalachia. It was my experience that it was a great kickstart to a weight-loss plan for someone who was at rock-bottom health and needed fast results while not feeling like you're starving. But I feel like it taught me to be bored with eating, and to establish a more healthy relationship with food. High-fat, mid-protein, low-carb sounds terrific for the first day or two but once you're two weeks in, you're so sick of it all that you'd just as soon drink some water and get back to whatever you're doing.
- wincy 4y ago
  Well I mean it worked for me because if I eat sugar I end up consuming something on the order of 4000+ calories per day. Something about carbohydrates makes me absolutely ravenous for sugars. Also if I don’t eat right as I feel hungry I’ll feel as if someone has gut punched me. I get absurdly hungry.
  - JamesianP 4y ago
    Even artificial sweetener leads to craving carbs in my case. As for the "gut punch" though, sounds like gastritis or something. Unless you're being metaphorical. For me, water helps when I'm fasting and stomach pains start.
    - matthewdgreen 4y ago
      This feeling is so intense for me that I’ve come to believe it’s something to do with the carbs and my gut microbiome changing. There’s a 1-2 week delay between changing diets and having these hunger pains start/stop that makes this feel more credible to me than insulin response changes or diet boredom. But: one should not treat N=1 subjective experiences as having any real value.
      - syntheweave 4y ago
        My "hunger pain" is tied to the some combination of the gut biome and the blood sugar cycle. It initially insists that I should eat frequently. If I persist through it, then an hour or two later, it settles down. Likewise, I've noticed an effect develop with artificial sweeteners where I can have small amounts without difficulty, but if I start consuming it several times in a 48 hour span, I get cramps. In periods where I've become addicted to carbs hunger pain is much stronger, but I've been able to keep it down for many years now. So if you're getting it intensely, your gut is probably still reactivating to its old profile. I believe restriction in the regular diet is one way of correcting it while staying in a routine. But I have also experimented with fasting, intense exercise, hot/cold contrast in the shower, and breathing exercises, and the common theme to each is to challenge homeostasis in some fashion. Obviously there's always some danger in going too far, but if our norm is total comfort, we can definitely drop some aspect of it from time to time.

xboxnolifes 4y ago

> The general advice, even from my primary care physician, has been that anything less than 1200kcal/day is dangerous and is crash dieting. Wouldn't this advise need to keep in mind absolute height? BMI tracks the ratio between the height and weight, but it does nothing to tell the difference between a short thin person and a taller heavier (but same BMI) person. The latter which would need more calories than the former. I know people who eat ~400 kcal less than me per day, because they are shorter and similarly thinner. Following that why wouldn't their crash diet threshold be sufficiently lower?

maximus-decimus 4y ago
The argument I've heard is that the other nutriments needs (vitamins, minerals, etc) don't scale as much with height. So even a very short person would have a vitamins/mineral deficit on less than 1200KCal per day. How true is it? I don't know. But even then I don't see why they couldn't take multivitamins.
- throwaway09223 4y ago
  Many American diets are calorie/energy rich and nutrient poor. If you're eating 400 calories of healthy food you're probably getting several times the vitamins and minerals of the average American eating 2500 of fried, sugary food. It's probably a mistake to connect the two.
  - dragontamer 4y ago
    Beef is very nutrient rich. Yes, we Americans overeat beef / Hamburgers, but I don't think anyone eating burgers is at huge risk of malnutrition... as much as a risk of heart problems, diabetes, cholesterol, etc. etc. It turns out that a standard burger with beef, ketchup, lettuce, onion, and bread covers most of your macro, and even micro-nutrients. It also is way overboard on salt and fats, but... that's not the particular problem here. One of the bigger problems vegetarians have is finding a proper replacement of meat and all of the easy nutrients meat contains. All amino acids, various vitamins, iron, etc. etc. There's a fair amount of nutrients here. And even the worst McDonalds burger contains a variety of lettuce / onions / ketchup that covers few nutrients that beef is missing (ex: Ketchup has Vitamin A, Potatoes / Fries has Vitamin C).

sacnoradhq 4y ago

Evidence needed: define "dangerous" in terms of micromorts based on what BMR and demographics (i.e., age, BMI, FFMI, height, gender)? There are risks to ponder about how critical (e.g., time vs. dangers) it is to get to a healthy weight. If someone dangerously obese maintains hydration, electrolytes, vitamins, and enough lipids to empty the gallbladder, getting to a low adipose tissue state, resetting insulin, ghrelin, and leptin sensitivities, and reducing the likelier risks of cancer(s) seems like a good tradeoff than either lap-band surgery or slow/plateau weight reductions. Intense hunger goes away after about 72-80 hours of "starvation", however brain fog and low energy dominate. Careful "starvation" dieting down to slightly underweight isn't something one can do without several months of spare time, ready access to healthcare, and immense self-control. Afterwards, self-control is absolutely required to avoid binge cycles. GLP-1 agonists are expensive but interesting crutches to get there slowly. It is likely that over millions of years of natural selection, the human body is far more tolerant of borderline starvation conditions than being stuffed with HFCS. Many types of cancers associated with Western diets are likely due to the human body becoming more hospitable, whereas chemotherapy and starvation add cellular stress that kills off malfunctioning cells. It's likely no accident whereas CHD, gout, diabetes, high cholesterol, and cancers are the consequent of unnatural diets and lifestyles.

Scoundreller 4y ago
> GLP-1 agonists are expensive but interesting crutches to get there slowly. Why stop at getting rid of glucose? Add some plasma donations and orlistat. Now you've got balanced macro loss! (don't do this)
- sacnoradhq 4y ago
  I was thinking about grafting on a rapidly-dividing, malignant neoplasm. (I actually donate whole blood and platelets often.) If someone were carrying around an extra 250 Mcal in adipose tissue, multiple factors determine what their risk budget could/should be to downsize to a suitable homeostatic state.

browningstreet 4y ago

David Goggins lost 100 lbs in 3 months on an 800ish calorie diet. I’m not recommending that… but what you can accomplish when you own it versus doing it for other reasons is probably significant too. Especially for when the “diet” (or whatever word is preferred, a la “intervention”) ends. I lost 60 lbs over a couple of years and set a state lifting record for my age group. I love what I do and kept the excess weight off. I got good at what I do and the intrinsic reward still burns, even though I’m not lifting for records anymore. I wake up every day ready to go hard for at least 50 minutes. It doesn’t take me more time than that to stay in shape, but I do eat consistent with my goals.. which is the harder part. I personally think someone needs to really own their desired outcome and then there are many valid and healthy ways — and even more “effective” ones — to get there. Hard to measure “own” though. Measuring every different kind of modality is generally missing the point. We actually know how people get in shape and stay in shape. The problem is generally in the mind.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
syrrim 4y ago
100 lbs in three months is ~1lb/day, thus a deficiency of 3500Cal/day. His maintenance intake would have been 4300Cals/day. That seems insanely high - what was his weight?
- browningstreet 4y ago
  He started north of 275 lbs if I remember. He was working out 3x a day. There are lots of videos out there about it. He was also overweight when he started, and he was going into hell week (military) so the first n lbs of weight would come off “easy”.
- MerelyMortal 4y ago
  It was 297lbs Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=GdHW1YipmVo https://youtube.com/watch?v=GdHW1YipmVo

MuffinFlavored 4y ago

dumb question: how easy is it for the average person to go from an “American” diet high in addictive things like bad fats, corn syrups, processed foods, etc. etc. to a “clean” 1200kcal diet? I was under the impression it was like trying to fight drug addiction and the chances of you sustaining it and not relapsing/making up the missed calories later as near impossible for most once you’ve become addicted enough to things like Diet Coke, Chik-Fil-A, etc.

mensetmanusman 4y ago
Limit yourself to one meal per day; use caffeine as hunger suppression. The one meal per day limit makes it hard to over/eat.
- nradov 4y ago
  Eating only one meal a day is not optimal from a protein standpoint. The current research indicates that at least two meals would be better. https://peterattiamd.com/donlayman/ https://peterattiamd.com/donlayman/
  - mensetmanusman 4y ago
    It might not be optimal, depending on what you are optimizing for. E.g. one meal is better for daytime alertness in my case.
BirAdam 4y ago
I lost about 50 pounds in ~3 months simply by cutting my carb intake to about 20g/day (eating just non-starchy vegetables, meats, sugarless dairy). This was moving from an “American” diet overnight to an extremely low carb diet. My caloric intake actually went up slightly. As for being difficult… yeah. The transition sucked. Body aches, headache, and very slight case of the blues. It took willpower. After about 3 days, I was okay. It was similar to quitting smoking for me, except that quitting smoking didn’t give me body aches.
andrekandre 4y ago

midhhhthrow 4y ago

Going on less than 200 calorie diets for days or even weeks on end was the norm in humanity for millions of years so how is it unhealthy all the sudden? It was a time of constant mass feast and famine alternating from one to other. The problem now is we have the feast part down pat but no famine

chrisfosterelli 4y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature Being the norm historically does not imply it is healthy or optimal, only that it is at least survivable on average.
harry8 4y ago
In general something being normal for humans for millennia does not mean it was healthy. It was normal to have incredibly painful teeth, probably not healthy. It was normal to die before reaching adulthood. It is entirely possible that something that was done for a long time is a healthy thing just as it is entirely possible that it was a terrible thing that we conquered with knowledge and abundance. Evidence is what tells you if the thing falls into one of those categories. I like living in a time where we are outraged if children in our community die and in cases where there was nothing that could have been done we want to do research to find something we can do in the future. That was not normal for millennia until really very recently and it seems healthy to me?
- remarkEon 4y ago
  > It was normal to have incredibly painful teeth, probably not healthy. Is this actually true? I thought archaic humans had much better dental outcomes because their diets had a small fraction of the sugars that modern diets do. Could be wrong but I was definitely under the impression that poor dental health was more a function of modern diet and not something that necessarily existed throughout history.
  - harry8 4y ago
    I'm no expert, this could be wrong, what I was told by an ancient historian was even the Pharohs with all their wealth had terrible painful teeth from sand in food which was ubiquitous until fairly recently. I have recollections of dental records of pre-historic persons being reported as pretty nasty. Feel free to nit-pick that example, there are an absolute plethora of others. When did surviving appendicitis become a thing? What was the median life expectancy for a newborn baby at various times in history? Calling out the fetishism of humans in a "natural state" needs to be done. Just as there are things we can learn from our pre-historic existence. Evidence is obviously the required thing not just amusing anecdote about how we have totally "lost our way."

ForrestN 4y ago

My doctors have always said that losing weight too quickly results in the metabolization of one's muscles and other important, healthy tissue in addition to fat. Could it be that crash dieting works narrowly to solve, for example, diabetes via the loss of fat, but has other negative consequences for the body? Maybe it's not a "doesn't work" thing, but a "collateral damage" thing or a "makes it harder to keep the weight off" thing, which is another old saw of why you shouldn't lose weight too fast?

nradov 4y ago
Weight loss always involves some loss of lean tissue in addition to fat. Dieters can mitigate this to an extent by protein intake high and maintaining an exercise program.
- radu_floricica 4y ago
  And sleep. It's rarely mentioned, but the difference between good and bad sleep may mean the difference of 80/20 fat/muscle loss, and 20/80. If the numbers are true (I know of at least one study, but no meta stuff) it means that crash dieting with bad sleep is actually counter productive, as you lose a lot more muscle than fat.

refurb 4y ago

“Dangerous”? How? I mean if you have some pre-existing disease sure. If you’re on certain diuretics you may screw up your blood chemistry, but an otherwise healthy, overweight person eating less than 1200 kcal/day? Maybe not the most efficient way to lose weight but it’s far from “dangerous”.

gip 4y ago

A proven treatment to reverse type 2 diabetes make use of the keto diet, a low carbs diet (not low cal) which may be less risky. For most patients with T2D, doctor supervision is advised. One company working to reverse diabetes in the US is https://www.virtahealth.com/ https://www.virtahealth.com/ (disclaimer: I work there).