What does a restrictive diet do to your body?
Following a restrictive diet means ingesting less food than your body needs to maintain a healthy weight or limiting certain food groups while prioritizing others. Remember that diets should be regulated by certified specialists able to adapt your necessities to a meal plan that will not harm you. Think twice before starting a restrictive diet without any support as it may damage your body and mental health in undesired ways. These are some signs that your diet could be too restrictive, endangering your mental and physical health:
This happens because your metabolism doesn’t get enough energy from the food you eat, so it has to break down your body tissues to produce it. Although weight loss is the goal of most people wanting to start a restrictive diet, it also comes with a loss in muscles and water, which are essential for the correct functioning of one’s body.
Due to the lack of nutrients, such as protein or calcium, you’ll be more likely to have weak, thin and less dense bones. Poor diets cause muscle loss, which supports bones, and a change in hormone levels, which regulate the maintenance and growth of bones.
Amenorrhea is the loss of a normal menstrual cycle for more than 3 months. While not getting enough food, your body will have to prioritize which functions are necessary to survive, and which can be stopped: as it enters a “starvation mode”, menstrual cycles will be paused to save energies for other functions.
Losing hair is a part of the hair growth cycle, but with a lack of protein and vitamins, your body won’t have enough nutrients to build your new hair and replace the one that has fallen.
As food contains calories, a unit of measure for energy, it provides our bodies with heat, ensuring that our temperature remains constant. Undereating is often linked to poor blood circulation and an overall feeling of constant cold.
If there is a lack of nutrients, there will be changes to the hormones that regulate your sleep: starving puts your brain on alert. Furthermore, going to bed hungry won’t make falling asleep easier.
Under-eating often causes hypoglycemia, a condition in which your glucose blood levels are below average. The lack of glucose makes your brain release adrenaline and cortisol, which make you nervous and moody.
This is pretty obvious: if your body doesn’t get enough food to survive, how could it develop?
If your energy intake is lower than what your metabolism needs, it will adapt and become more efficient, needing less food to survive. That’s why most of the people who lose weight unhealthily, gain it back soon: when they come back to eating normally their metabolism is used to surviving with less food.
When your body needs food, it sends signals to your brain, which translate into thinking about food. Constantly craving food, but not allowing yourself to eat, will make you think about it even more.