Eating too few calories can actually slow down the rate at which you lose weight.  This can be confusing as all too often you are told that the way to lose weight is to eat less calories and exercise.  While technically this is true, it is important to understand that your body needs a certain amount of calories in order to function.  If you are eating too few calories, your body feels like it is starving.  At this point, your body will actually begin to store fat and your metabolism will begin to slow down.  When your metabolism slows down, it burns calories at a slow speed and basically puts your body into neutral mode.  Basically, your weight loss efforts are going nowhere and you stop losing weight.Visit our home page and search our site for the best ways on how to lose weight fast.

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The Effects of Eating Too Few Calories

When your body goes into starvation mode, there are many health issues that you increase your risk of experiencing.   Eating too few calories can cause irregular menstrual periods or they could completely stop.  Once the menstrual cycles cease, then bone loss becomes a risk because of the lack of estrogen and poor nutrition.

Anemia can become a problem because of iron deficiency and a decreased immunity from low protein levels.  Once the immune system is compromised, colds and the flu become a risk, as well as other serious illnesses.  As your body starts to shut down, your body's thyroid function becomes affected and tries to slow down to adapt to the starvation mode of the body.  This can cause you to feel cold all of the time and fatigue can set in.

Other health risks of eating too few calories include:

• Gallstones
• Abnormal heart rhythm
• Imbalance in electrolytes
• Slow heart rate
• Low blood pressure
• Loss of hair
• Brittle fingernails
• Difficulty in concentrating
• Brittle bone
• Joint swelling
• Depression

Eating too Few Calories - How many is too few?

The amount of calories you should intake to remain healthy depends on your body weight and activity level.  Before you can determine how many calories are too few calories, you must find the amount of calories that your body needs to survive.  There are many online calculators that are able to calculate this for you.  These calculators generally do not include exercise.  Therefore, if you do any activity at all, including walking to the car, you must add calories to this number.   This is an important number and you must take it seriously.  Eating too few calories below this number will cause serious damage to your body.  Never take in less than 1200 calories per day.

How many Calories will actually help you Lose the Weight?

Once you determine what you need to survive, you will need to determine what calories you need to maintain your existing weight.  There are also online calculators to help you with this task.  After you determine what calories are needed to maintain the weight, you will be able to determine how many calories you need to lose weight.   It is important to understand that you must lose weight at a reasonable rate, or your body will go into starvation mode.  This is usually about one to two pounds per week.  All you need to do this is to reduce or burn about 500 extra calories each day.  It is important to include exercise into this equation.  Try cutting back on 300 calories per day as well as burn 200 calories by exercising.

Eating too few calories can slow down your weight loss efforts by slowing down your metabolism and causing serious health problems.

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