Many individuals seeking rapid weight loss explore drastic dietary changes, including very low-calorie diets (VLCDs) like the 900-calorie diet. This article delves into the potential risks and benefits of a 900-calorie diet, its effectiveness, and safer, more sustainable approaches to weight management.
What is a 900-Calorie Diet?
A 900-calorie diet is a very low-calorie diet (VLCD) that restricts daily caloric intake to approximately 900 calories. Participants typically consume only water or unsweetened black coffee to minimize calorie consumption and suppress hunger.
Is a 900-Calorie Diet Safe?
For most people, the 900-calorie diet is not safe and should be avoided. As mentioned above, this diet is incredibly low in calories for both men and women. The recommended calorie intake varies based on factors such as age, sex, lifestyle, physical activity level, and height. The absolute lowest recommended calorie intake per day for most women and men is 1,200 and 1,500 calories, respectively. Going below the recommended caloric intake has multiple possible side effects, both short-term and long-term.
Potential Risks of a 900-Calorie Diet
Adhering to a 900-calorie diet can lead to several health risks:
- Metabolic Slowdown: When you don’t eat enough, your body may assume that you’re starving and go into ‘starvation mode’. When you eat too few calories, this interrupts your metabolism. As stated above, your body thinks that food is scarce and that it should conserve energy. It slows down metabolic processes so that the energy you have stored lasts longer. Without enough food to turn into energy, your body turns to the muscle, which it starts burning to give you energy.
- Nutrient Deficiencies: They occur when the body doesn’t absorb or get enough vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients from food. These nutrients are essential for both body development and disease prevention.
- Gallstones: These are pieces of solid material that form in your gallbladder. Gallstones are more common during rapid weight loss. When you don’t eat enough or lose weight quickly, the liver secretes more cholesterol into bile, which can then form gallstones.
- Unsustainable Results: You should also know that this diet is not sustainable. Rapid weight loss is also not healthy, and its results are difficult to maintain over time. According to the CDC, a gradual and steady weight loss of 1 to 2 pounds per week is more likely to be maintained.
- Other Side Effects: Extreme reductions in calorie intake can cause harmful side effects, such as: dizziness, extreme hunger, nausea, fatigue, headaches.
Exceptions Under Medical Supervision
Certain individuals may be prescribed a VLCD under strict medical supervision. These exceptions typically involve individuals with obesity who need to lose weight for health reasons, often before weight-loss surgery.
Read also: Achieve Your Weight Loss Goals: 1700-Calorie Diet Explained
Potential Benefits of a 900-Calorie Diet
While the risks generally outweigh the benefits, there may be some instances where a medically supervised 900-calorie diet could be considered.
- Rapid Weight Loss: At the start of this eating plan or any other calorie deficit diet, your weight will fall off quite fast, but it will stop after a while. If you have a BMI over 30 (which your doctor will call “obese”), then a very low-calorie diet may result in a loss of 3 to 5 pounds per week, for an average total weight loss of 44 pounds over 12 weeks. But losing as little as 5% of your body weight may improve medical conditions, including diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol.
- Improvement in Health Conditions: Rapid weight loss diet is usually for people who have health problems because of obesity. For these people, losing a lot of weight quickly can help improve: Diabetes, High cholesterol, High blood pressure.
Foods to Consider (Under Medical Supervision)
If you’re insistent on trying this eating plan and are being medically supervised while doing so, here are some foods you should ensure to add to your diet.
- Whole Grains: These include foods such as whole wheat, brown and wild rice, oats, and quinoa. Not only are they low in calories, carbs, sodium, and fat, they also have high levels of fiber, iron, magnesium, potassium, and calcium.
- Proteins: Proteins are a big part of very low-calorie diets. A high-protein diet helps with weight loss by increasing satiety hormones while reducing levels of the hunger hormone, ghrelin. Proteins also boost your metabolism slightly, which makes you burn a few more calories. Examples include trout, tuna, salmon, mackerel, herring, sardines, and pilchards.
- Vegetables: Dark leafy greens are not the only vegetables you should consume on the 900-calorie diet.
Alternatives to the 900-Calorie Diet
Several safer and more sustainable dietary approaches can promote weight loss without the risks associated with VLCDs.
- Low-Calorie Diet (LCD): These diets usually allow about 1,200 to 1,500 calories a day for women and 1,500 to 1,800 calories a day for men. An LCD is a better choice than a VLCD for most people who want to lose weight quickly. But you should still be supervised by your provider. You will not lose weight as fast with an LCD, but you can lose just as much weight with a VLCD. An LCD may use a mix of meal replacements and regular food. This makes it easier to follow than a VLCD.
- Mediterranean Diet: The Mediterranean diet involves high intake of fruits and vegetables, poultry, and fish and dairy products, and little to no consumption of red meat. The effectiveness of the Mediterranean diet for weight loss and preventing cardiovascular disease is supported by sufficient evidence. Its benefits may extend to the reduction in cancer risk and significant reduction in digestive cancer risk.
- Low-Carbohydrate Diet: A low-carb diet limits the amount of carbohydrates you eat. In general, you digest complex carbs more slowly. Complex carbs also have less effect on blood sugar than refined carbs do. Refined carbs such as sugar or white flour are often added to processed foods. A daily limit of 0.7 to 2 ounces (20 to 57 grams) of carbohydrates is typical with a low-carb diet. These amounts of carbohydrates provide 80 to 240 calories. Some low-carb diets greatly limit carbs during the early phase of the diet.
- Time-Restricted Eating: This diet strategy is becoming more popular. It is often compared to fasting, but the two strategies are slightly different. Time-restricted eating limits the number of hours per day that you can eat. A popular strategy is the 16:8. For this diet, you have to eat all of your meals during an 8 hour period, for example, 10 am to 6 pm. The rest of the time you cannot eat anything.
General Tips for Safe and Sustainable Weight Loss
The best way to lose weight safely and successfully is by adopting healthy eating habits.
- Set Realistic Goals: Start with small, realistic goals, and then, as these become a habit, increase the goals. For example, make it a goal to start each dinner with a side salad or serve vegetables as a side dish. Once this becomes standard practice, introduce a second goal, such as having fruit with breakfast.
- Incorporate Exercise: Also, think about setting some exercise goals. A good example is setting a goal to walk for 15 minutes 3 times a week. Once this becomes routine, increase the time or number of sessions each week.
- Be Patient: Remember that it takes time to gain weight, so it may take even more time to lose weight safely. Quick weight-loss plans have little scientific support and can lead to individuals regaining all the weight they lost and more.
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