Expert: Meg - 6/26/2006

Question
hi, i was wondering if you lose weight by not eating (starving) and only consuming water and chewie for a week along with 4 hours of exercise per day can you actually lose weight by doing this? how much is it possible to lose in a 10 day period? mum seems to think that you would lose 1 kg of fluid but i think that you would lose more but she just doesn't want me to lose weight? i was hoping to lose around 3-4 kg is this do able in this time period please tell me the truth as to whether you think i could lose that much in this amount of time? i am 170cm tall and am 49-50kg  as i have put on weight do ask me how i have no idea and just want to lose it? P.S you can't gain weight from starving can you?  

Answer
Hi Jen,

Unfortunately, there is no way for me to tell you exactly how much weight you would lose in 10 days from severe restriction and over exercising.  It all depends on how much damage your body already has and how your metabolism is functioning at this point.  What I can tell you is that fasting and exercising for 4 hours a day will cause severe damage to your body and might wind up with your having to be admitted to a hospital.  I really do NOT recommend doing this as a diet plan.

It sounds to me like you are pretty caught up in your eating disorder right now and I really feel for you as I remember a time when I felt extremely desperate to watch the number on the scale go down too and would do just about anything.  Sadly, fasting isn't a good way to lose weight and you deserve to be healthy and not have to put your body through this.  

Your Mom is correct that continuous fasting and exercising without giving your body adequate fuel will cause your metabolism to shut down making it hard to lose any weight.  As counterintuitive as it sounds, your body requires food to function and it needs to function to lose weight.  Not that I think you should be losing weight-but I can say definitively that fasting is not going to be a good thing for you.

Have you been able to find a nutritionist to help you out with this yet?  I really think that it might be beneficial for yout to better understand the role that food serves as energy for the body (I know this helped me a lot).  It is not the enemy and food/fuel will NOT make you fat.  Here are a few links that might help some.


http://www.waddleon.com/HTML/tips-fuel.shtml\

http://www.bodycage.com/r_period.html

http://www.edreferral.com/links.htm

Please take care and think about talking with someone about this as it sounds like you are getting deeper and deeper into your eating disorder.

Feel free to write anytime and let me know how you're doing or if there is anything else that I can help with.

Take care, okay?
Meg