To eat 500 calories a day for 12 weeks

[Summerdays55]

How much weight would I lose

Don't do it!

Aim for 800 every second day.

The weight will still drop off.

I used to eat that when I was anorexic for months on end. I ended up in hospital. It is NOT healthy.

The first few days, even the first couple of weeks are OK. Thereafter, not only will you be lacking in nutrients that you need, you will also have no energy, and you will lose all your emotional balance too - you will alternate between almost hysterical euphoria and feeling completely desolate, snappy, teary and generally unbalanced- and you may make some very bad decisions. You will obsess about food and not eating to the exclusion of everything else. You won't really be safe to drive or to do anything responsible. If you do manage to keep it up, you will end up looking saggy, haggard and emaciated, not fit and slim. If you push it to extremes, hair will grow on your face and body, your hair will go dull and start falling out, your nails will become all bendy and broken instead of being hard, and you will start to feel all kinds of visceral pains.

It is WAY better to eat just a little bit less and exercise just a little bit more over a longer time frame.

I've been doing a mixture of 5:2 and low calorie. 5 days a week I eat under 1000 calories, and 2 days a week under 500. I've also had two big cheat days recently with alcohol and a meal out.

I've lost 2 stone since the beginning of January, and I'm not hungry at all.

good health is a gift. Don't throw it away.

unless you are one of the 600lb American reality TV types and under close medical supervision, this is frankly insane.

You can do but you'll feel like total shit and probably not lose that much.

Is this a prescribed VLCD or just you restricting food?

Why don't you stick yo 1200 calories a day instead? 500 is not enough.

You are BU if you want to keep the weight off.

I saw an interesting documentary which showed that after a phase of being deprived of food the brain lights up at any highly calorific food as a way to make up for the bodies lost energy/weight.

If you want to stay slim you need to change your eating habits for good.

I did 800 per week day for a couple of weeks before my holiday and lost 12lbs, iirc.

It was actually very easy.

Try the Michael Moseley Blood Sugar Diet

thebloodsugardiet.com/

Isant that what lighter life comes out at?

I did 700 a day for 10 weeks felt like crap but went from a size 18 to a size 8 in that time.

Felt like crap tho wouldn't recommend it

I'm sure I've read about actors damaging their hearts crash-dieting for roles in films.
You'll lose loads of muscle as well as fat and probably get really wobbly.
And you'll go mad.

If you limit your calorie intake that severely, your body actually goes into starvation mode and stores as much of what you do eat as fat as it possibly can, much more so than usual. So you could actually end up putting ON weight, or at least losing at a much, much slower rate than you would if you were eating, say, 1400 calories a day and doing light exercise. Plus you will feel awful.

If you limit your food intake to almost nothing, there is a danger you will become fixated on food and get into a starve/binge pattern of eating.

Not recommended.

YABU for all the reasons already mentioned.

Any good reason why you can't be more sensible, or is your OP your only input to this thread?

Partly depends on your TDEE. If it's 2,500 then 500 calories a day would be disastrous. If it's 1,200 then 500 calories might be manageable but I assume that if you're in the market for such an extreme diet that means you've got a lot to lose, and a TDEE that's pretty high - unless you're bed bound.

500 a day is actually less than you eat after a gastric bypass (and I had one, in June.) In order to cope with the lack of calories, patients are monitored very closely, we have to be incredibly strict with what we eat to ensure we are getting the maximum nutritional value out of anything we put in our mouths, and we are prescribed a full range of vitamins and minerals to take because there is no way to get the necessary nutrition out of our restricted allowances - which for most of us are between 800-1200 cals per day on average. Even with all that, we frequently have complications such as gallstones and many of us lose our hair.

Is your attempt to lose connected to going on holiday? You'd be better off sticking to something less restrictive but cutting out all crap carbs (so no booze, white bread, white pasta, pastry, or anything with sugar) and hitting the gym for strength training so you will look more toned.

Check out myfitnesspal forums for specific help with your situation/goal. People there are generally very helpful and realistic.

Not unreasonable per se, more like loopy. You will probably make yourself quite ill.

The answer depends on how big you are in the first place and how much you walk araound in that 12 weeks - assuming you re morbidly obese to try this somewhere in the region of 5-7 stone.

another vote for Michael Moseley diet at 800 calories per day. Its basically no carbs but quite interesting. I am not great at sticking to diets but found this OK - lost 16lb in three weeks - lots on the first week and then slower thereafter.

encourages exercise too but having more of a battle with that!

Paul Mackenna Paul Mackenna Paul Mackenna way of eating. It works, No starvation diets, bad idea.

You can eat when you're hungry on it. It's brilliant and you can stay on it for life.

Just be aware: I stuck absolutely rigidly to a vegetarian low fat diet of 1000 calories per day for 3 months at the end of last year. During that period, I lost 1lb. Not 1lb per week - 1lb. And I felt miserable and deprive every single one of those months. Also - I am morbidly obese: so it should have been dropping off, even though I couldn't move much owing to serious injury, according to all theories of weight loss.

Yes, it might eventually have worked and I could have had a huge loss if I'd stuck to it longer - maybe week 16 would have seen a stone go all in one fell swoop. But I've now been doing the MN BC for 4 weeks, not felt hungry or deprived once: and I've lost 200g under 1 stone. I know which I prefer. And which is easier to stick to.

Honestly - it's a mug's game trying VLCD: people lose weight very quickly if it works for them - but they never keep it off. And saggy flaps of skin is an even worse look imo than rolls of fat.

Try the Michael Moseley Blood Sugar Diet
thebloodsugardiet.com/

Seconded, a friend is on her third week, hasn't felt hungry and is happy with it and the weightloss.

Back in the day when I was a stupid 24 year old, I did Lighter Life which is about 500 cals I think for 12 weeks. I went from 12st 6 to 9lb 5. I looked, felt and smelled dreadful. Afterwards I increased my calorie intake slowly so it took me 2 months to reach 1800 calories per day. In that 2 months I gained almost 2 stone.

9st 5! 9lb 5 really would have been an impressive result!