Please Don't Diet

[brynndragon]

Via the_xtina, a discussion of the Minnesota Starvation Study, the most comprehensive study on the psychological and physiological effects of semistarvation we have ever done. Semistarvation in this case is defined as getting 1600 calories per day; MyPyramid.gov indicates that a 25 year old male who is active 30-60 minutes/day should get 2800 calories/day. To give you an idea how harsh that sort of restriction is, this study could not be repeated today because it would be deemed "cruel and possibly life-threatening".

I want to note one of the psychological effects these men experienced while doing what we would consider pretty standard (even generously proportioned) dieting: "self-critical with distorted body images and even feeling overweight". Now, these men were not overweight when the study began, much less so while they were losing 2.5lb/week. Yet somehow dieting caused them to perceive themselves as overweight. Hmm. . .

(I'd put The Biology of Human Starvation (Keys two-volume book that seems to be the published paper of the study and its results) on my wish list if I could actually find a copy)

Comments

[randysmith]

You do things to shift your body into a higher calorie processing mode. Exercise is the obvious thing; I believe the baseline (non-active) calorie consumption of muscle mass is much higher than other tissues. There's some suggestion that walking/hiking/running (bone impact) triggers some hormones that specifically increase metabolism rate. And you make sure to eat reasonably healthfully and not eat things your body doesn't need. That has two wins: a) if you're getting all your micronutrients, you're less likely to feel hungry when you have enough calories (mind you, habit can be a bitch to break), and b) I believe (no evidence here) that just being in better health will tend to improve your weight.

But I have an intense aversion to starving yourself. It strikes me as being based on an extremely (and obviously) simplistic view of this large collection of feedback systems known as the human body.

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

see above...

i've always been suspicious of how they calculate your calorie #.

ideally, over a certain term, you'd calculate it based on measured food intake, everything else being constant, and observe when weight remains dead stable. then you know. that can be really hard.

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