Is only eating 500 calories bad?

Yes, because you burn 300 or so calories doing non-regular activities everyday. You need nutrition and calories for your day. Eat a 1,200 calorie diet that includes some considerable exercise regime and your good to go.

Remember that one pound of fat has 3,500 calories. If you burn more than what you eat, every day, you'll eventually lose weight. It's a slow process, so have faith.

Th human body needs 800 calories a day to use the vitamins/ minerals and all that fun to make the body healthy. If you do not get at least that many, your body can't function properly. You'll lose your muscles first, and that can be extremely painful, you'd become lethargic, lose motivation, and could lead to depression.

Formula for Amount of calories in order to maintain your weight:

Weight x *10.9 for men, 9.6 for women* = #
That # x * 1.6 for low to moderate exercise, 1.8 for more stringent excersise, 1.7 middle* =

# of calories in a pound: 3500



Another thing : Hunger= body's need for food
Appetite= Brain telling your body your hungry.

If you're eating 500 calories a day, that is not healthy, and you need to get either therapy to help your mind (aka anorexia) or do something about increasing your appetite (medical marijuana DOES ACTUALLY FIT for that condition).


-Tamc, Culinary Major at Delaware Technical College, with a few years of studying nutrition.

Hitler starved Jews in ghettos with 384 calories per day.
You're treading close to the edge.

But it may be OK for you, if you feel OK, not out of sorts.

Ted

Ok, first of all, the body doesn't need 2000 calories for "survival". 2000 calories is about the average daily expenditure for a woman, though depending on your size could be more or less. Anything less than that means you will be losing weight, not necessarily dying as others would have you imagine.

500 is not unsafe for a short amount of time (less than a month), although that's a pretty drastic diet (I have read about a scientific study where patients male and female were put on a 600 cal diet in addition to either a cardio or weight training for 3 weeks to measure fat/muscle loss. The goal of this particular experiment was different, but they found no adverse effects except for muscle loss in the cardio group).

If you burn 2000 calories a day then that's losing 3 lbs a week not counting water weight etc, which doesn't sound like much, but that's really quite a bit. I would suggest that depending on your dieting preference, you could follow this, but *not* for very long. You're gonna end up having to eat more eventually due to your dietary needs, so may as well follow a more reasonable diet.

So basically, moral of the story is, you're not gonna die from doing this for a little while, and you probably will lose a lot of weight. Just in the long term, that is what you would call anorexia. Be careful with how you diet.

Unless you are under strict medical supervision, 500 calories per day is an unhealthy diet. Period. Depending on your activity level, you ought to be eating 1800 to 2400 calories per day: link

If you continue eating so little, there's a very high risk of serious damage to your health. "To be healthy, we need a balance of foods from different food groups. It's quite difficult to get good nutrition in as few as 800 calories (even a dietitian would have trouble doing this), especially if one eats the same foods day after day." link

'I don't starve myself' Yes, yes you do. The average human adult needs around 2000 calories a day for survival. You, as a growing adolescent need quite a bit more. And if you aren't providing yourself with enough, you are causing long term damage to your body. Also you aren't getting near enough vitamins, minerals, etc from so few calories. You need to start eating much more.

The reason you're not that hungry is because your metabolism has gone into "starvation mode". It has slowed way down trying to conserve fat and energy because your body thinks its not going to get any more food.

the Nazis fed their concentration camp inhabitants on around 350 calories each per day and they died. you're not eating much more than they were.

Yes. That's extremely unhealthy.