Here at SKY SPA we like to focus on your overall wellbeing to ensure that you feel amazing. Your nutrition is an important part of that. With that in mind its important to understand all aspects of nutrition including:
What happens to your body when you eat too few calories?
If you find yourself talking about health and fitness it usually won’t take you long to start up a conversation about weight, diet, energy balance and calories. More often than not about losing weight, restrictive diets and less calories.
I think the majority of us would like to lose some sort of fat and the simple way of doing that is by being in a calorie deficit (eating less calories than you burn). When cutting down on foods its important to ensure that the focus is on long term health and sustainability rather than a quick fix. It's also important to know when cutting calories, what happens if you take it too far and cut too many. The first thing to understand regarding calories is BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) - simply put it’s the number of calories your body needs to accomplish basic life sustaining functions. There is an equation but it’s easier to simply head over to a calorie calculator online (https://www.calculator.net/calorie-calculator.html). There are a few different factors involved in getting this number but as an average it’s around 1400kcal for women and 1800kcal for men.
When you start consuming less calories than your BMR several things can occur. Your body will notice that you're not consuming as many calories and will slow down your metabolism and burn less calories to conserve its energy stores. This is why cutting calories too drastically for a sustained period of time often leads to you halting weight loss.
If you reach this point where your metabolism slows and your weight is no longer going down, you’ll find yourself in a vicious cycle that will affect both your mental and physical wellbeing. You’ll may frustrated with the lack of progress in your weight loss journey and you may feel that you want to eat even less or you may start to binge eat and all your progress will be lost. The only way to get out of this cycle will be to eat more calories than before which in turn will mean that your weight may increase whilst your metabolism is still working at its slower state. Obviously this is not a healthy or sustainable option.
Other health risks that may occur with a sustained diet of extremely low calories are:
Low blood pressure Abnormal heart rate Gallstones Hair loss Brittle fingernails Loss of menstrual cycle in women Dizziness Trouble concentrating Anemia Swelling of joints Depression Lack of energy
So when your focusing on what to eat please ensure that you are eating a healthy amount of food and try to stick to a well balanced diet. If you would like some help regarding health, fitness and nutrition please comment below or send us an email at info@skyspawellnesscentre.com
