Many of us have probably put on a few pounds, what with all the festive feasting of recent times. And now, as our lives go back to the regular routine, a desire to lose those extra pounds kicks in. The most common and immediate reaction may be, ‘let me starve for a few days or try one of those diets that will help me lose a few pounds in a week’. While you may lose weight in doing so, the sad part is that you also do some profound damage to your body through such methods.

Whenever you skip a meal, or eat just soups, salads or fruits and your total calorie intake for the day goes below 1000 calories, you send a very dangerous message to your body, that there is a crisis in the person’s life. With a reduced food intake, the body goes into course correction mode by expending lesser energy for metabolic activities. We all know that a large chunk of the calorie expenditure for a day is to keep up the basal metabolic rate (BMR).

Eventually, the body slows the BMR, which is very dangerous as your calorie burning capacity reduces. In doing so, you may lose some weight, but in future, whenever you eat more than 1000 calories you will tend to gain weight.

Another irreparable damage that such fasting does is the loss of muscle. Every day, one requires a good supply of protein through the diet for tissue building and repair and maintenance of the body. On an average an adult requires about 60-70 gm protein every day, distributed over the meals. But when you skip a meal, one portion of protein for the day is lost. When you fast and starve almost all the protein required for that day is not supplied and the body begins to break down muscle tissue to make up for the deficiency.

So however desperate you feel, don’t resort to skipping meals or fasting after feasting.

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