I’m pretty sure that I’ve said this several times already, but it’s so important that it’s worth re-emphasizing several times over – the best way to lose weight is to eat regular healthy meals and to not starve yourself.
When you restrict your food intake, or effectively start to starve your body, your metabolism slows right down and your body will soon go in to “starvation mode”. Once your metabolism slows down, your body is unable to burn calories as effectively as it should be able to, which ultimately means your weight loss slows right down or may even grind to a halt.
What happens then is that your body begins to feed off itself for the nutrition it needs, which means it starts digesting your muscles more than your fat reserves (muscles hold more nutrients than fat, which is why these get “eaten” as well as your stored fat).
Any weight that you do lose while you’re starving your body will sure enough come right back once you start eating properly again. The main reason for this is that your body will still be in starvation mode, so will just store everything that you eat as fat simply because it thinks this may be the last nutrition it gets for a while.
If you continue to eat a normal diet with regular meals only then will your body come out of starvation mode and start to properly digest the food you eat.
So the best way to lose weight is not to starve yourself, but to eat regular meals – the best option is to eat 4 or 5 smaller meals throughout the day so that you keep your metabolism high. Your body gets used to regular and frequent meals so actually switches into overdrive, burning off more calories because it knows it doesn’t need to store any.